2.1.'7^S 


LIBRARY    OF    THE    THEOLOGICAL    SEMINARY 


PRINCETON,    N.    J. 
PRESENTED    BY 

Mrs.  joUn  i^yr.ii. 

BS  2415  .A2  T4  v. 2  c.2 
Teachings  of  Jesus 
concerning  the  . . . 


THE  TEACHINGS  OF  JESUS 
Edited  by  ]Oim  H.  KERR,  D.  D. 


THE   TEACHING   OF   JESUS 

CONCERNING 

THE    KINGDOM    OF   GOD  AND 

THE  CHURCH 


Geerhardus  Vos.  ph.  d.,  d.  d. 


THE  'teachings  OF  JESUS 

CONCERNING 

HIS  OWN  MISSION.         Frank  H.  Foster.      Ready. 

THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD  AND  THE  CHURCH. 

Geerhardus  Vos.        Ready. 

HIS  OWN  PERSON In  preparation. 

GOD  THE  FATHER 

THE  SCRIPTURES 

CHRISTIAN  CONDUCT " 

THE  HOLY  SPIRIT 

THE  FUTURE  LIFE 

THE  FAMILY 

THE  CHRISTIAN  LIFE 

A   Series  of  volumes   on  the    "  Teachings  of   Jesus " 
by  eminent  writers  and  divines. 

Cloth  bound.     I2m6.  Price  75  cts  each  postpaid. 

AMERICAN  TRACT  SOCIETY. 


THE  TEACHING  OF  JESUS 


CONCERNING 


THE  KINGDOM  OF  GOD 
AND  THE  CHURCH 


Geerhardus  Vos,  Ph.  D.,  D.  D. 


AMERICAN   TRACT    SOCIETY 

150  NASSAU  STREET 
NEW  YORK 


Copyright,  igo^,  by 
AMERICAN  TRACT  SOCIETY 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 

I.  Introductory i 

II.  The     Kingdom    and    the     Old 

Testament ii 

III.  Kingdom     and     Kingship.     The 

Kingdom     of     God    and    the 
Kingdom  of   Heaven.     ...     25 

IV.  The    Present    and    the  Future 

Kingdom 38 

V.  Current  Misconceptions  Re- 
garding THE  Present  and  Fu- 
ture Kingdoms 66 

VI.  The  Essence  of  the  Kingdom  : 
The  Kingdom  as  the  Suprem- 
acy of  God  in  the  Sphere  of 

Saving  Power 80 

VII.  The  Essence  of  the  Kingdom 
continued  :  The  Kingdom  in 
THE  Sphere  of  Righteousness.   103 

V 


vi  Contents 

PAGE 

VIII.  The    Essence    of    the    Kingdom 
CONTINUED  :    The   Kingdom  as 
A  State  of  Blessedness.     .     .      125 
IX.  The  Kingdom  and  the  Church.   140 
X.  The   Entrance   into  the  King- 
dom :  Repentance  and  Faith,   169 

XI.  Recapitulation 191 

Indices 195 


CHAPTER  I 

Introductory 

/N  the  body  of  our  Lord's  teaching 
as  recorded  in  the  Gospels  the  ref- 
erences to  the  kingdom  of  God  oc- 
cupy a  prominent  place.  According  to 
the  common  testimony  of  the  Synoptical 
Gospels  Jesus  opened  his  public  ministry 
in  Galilee  with  the  announcement,  that 
the  kingdom  was  at  hand,  Matt.  iv.  17 ; 
Mk.  i.  15  ;  Lk.  iv.  43.  In  the  last  men- 
tioned passage  he  even  declares  that  the 
main  purpose  of  his  mission  consists  in 
the  preaching  of  the  good  tidings  of  the 
kingdom  of  God.     And  not  only  does 


2    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

the  conception  thus  stand  significantly  at 
the  beginning  of  our  Lord's  work,  it 
reappears  at  the  culminating  points  of 
his  teaching,  as  in  the  beatitudes  of  the 
Sermon  on  the  Mount  and  in  the  king- 
dom-parables. Its  importance  will  best 
be  felt  by  considering  that  the  coming 
of  the  kingdom  is  the  great  event  which 
Jesus  connects  with  his  appearance  and 
activity,  and  that  consequently  in  his 
teaching,  which  was  so  closely  dependent 
on  his  working,  this  event  must  also  have 
a  corresponding  prominence. 

If  this  be  true  from  Jesus'  own  stand- 
point, it  is  no  less  true  from  the  stand- 
point of  his  disciples.  In  their  life 
likewise  the  kingdom  of  God  forms  the 
supreme  object  of  pursuit,  and  there- 
fore of  necessity  the  theme  about  which 
before  all  other  things  they  need  care- 
ful instruction.  Again,  the  work  of 
those  whom  Jesus  trained  as  his  special 
helpers  in  preaching  related  chiefly  to 
this    same    subject,    for    he    speaks    of 


Introductory  3 

them  as  scribes  made  disciples  to  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,  Matt.  xiii.  52. 
Better  than  by  mere  statistics  showing 
the  explicit  references  to  the  kingdom  in 
our  Lord's  discourses  can  we  along  the 
above  lines  be  led  to  appreciate  how  large 
a  place  the  subject  of  our  investigation 
must  have  had  in  his  thought. 

It  might  be  objected  to  all  this, 
that  in  the  version  which  the  Fourth 
Gospel  gives  of  Jesus'  teaching,  the 
idea  of  the  kingdom  plays  a  very 
subordinate  role,  indeed  occurs  only 
twice  altogether,  viz.,  Jno.  iii.  3,  5 ; 
xviii.  36.  But  this  is  a  feature  explain- 
able from  the  peculiarity  of  John's  Gos- 
pel in  general.  Here  the  person  of 
Jesus  as  the  Son  of  God  stands  in  the 
foreground,  and  the  whole  compass  of 
his  work  is  represented  as  given  in  and 
resulting  from  his  person.  Salvation 
according  to  the  discourses  preserved 
in  this  Gospel  is  made  up  of  those 
primal  elements  into  which  the  being  of 


4    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Christ  can  be  resolved,  such  as  light, 
life,  grace,  truth.  What  the  Saviour  does 
is  the  outcome  of  what  he  is.  In  the 
Synoptists  on  the  other  hand  the  work 
of  Jesus  is  made  central  and  all-important, 
and  especially  during  the  earlier  stages 
of  his  ministry  his  person  and  personal 
relation  to  this  work  are  only  so  much 
referred  to  as  the  circumstances  of  the 
discourse  make  absolutely  necessary. 

After  all,  however,  this  amounts  only 
to  a  different  mode  of  viewing  the  same 
things  :  there  is  no  contradiction  involved 
as  to  their  inner  essence.  In  a  significant 
saying  uttered  even  before  the  beginning 
of  his  great  Galilean  ministry  our  Lord 
himself  has  affirmed  the  identity  of  the 
kingdom  with  at  least  one  of  the  concep- 
tions that  dominate  his  teaching  accord- 
ing to  John,  viz.,  that  of  life.  To  Nicode- 
mus  he  speaks  of  the  mysterious  birth  of 
water  and  the  Spirit  as  the  only  entrance 
into  the  kingdom  of  God.  Now,  inas- 
much as   birth  is  that  process  by  which 


Inti'oditctory  5 

one  enters  into  life,  and  since  in  the  im- 
mediately following  context  life  is  silently 
substituted  for  the  kingdom,  it  is  plain 
that  these  two  are  practically  equivalent, 
just  as  the  sphere  of  truth  and  the  king- 
dom are  equivalent  in  the  other  passage, 
xviii.  36.  With  this  accords  the  fact 
that  in  the  Synoptical  teaching  the  re- 
verse may  occasionally  be  observed,  viz., 
that  life  is  used  interchangeably  with 
the  kingdom,  cf.  Mk.  x.  17,  with  vs. 
23. 

While  thus  recognizing  that  the  king- 
dom of  God  has  an  importance  in  our 
Lord's  teaching  second  to  that  of  no  other 
subject,  we  should  not  go  to  the  extreme 
into  which  some  writers  have  fallen,  of 
finding  in  it  the  only  theme  on  which 
Jesus  actually  taught,  which  would  imply 
that  all  other  topics  dealt  with  in  his  dis- 
courses were  to  his  mind  but  so  many 
corollaries  or  subdivisions  of  this  one  great 
truth.  The  modern  attempts  to  make 
the  kingdom  of  God  the  organizing  cen- 


6    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

ter  of  a  theological  system  have  here 
exerted  a  misleading  influence  upon  the 
interpretation  of  Jesus'  teaching.  From 
the  fact  that  the  proximate  object  of  his 
saving  work  was  the  realization  of  the 
kingdom,  the  wrong  inference  has  been 
drawn,  that  this  must  have  been  also  the 
highest  category  under  which  he  viewed 
the  truth.  It  is  plain  that  the  one  does 
not  follow  from  the  other.  Salvation 
with  all  it  contains  flows  from  the  nature 
and  subserves  the  glory  of  God,  and  we 
can  clearly  perceive  that  Jesus  was  ac- 
customed consciously  to  refer  it  to  this 
divine  source  and  to  subordinate  it  to  this 
God-centered  purpose,  cf.  Jno.  xvii.  4. 
He  usually  spoke  not  of  **  the  kingdom  " 
absolutely,  but  of  *'  the  kingdom  of  God  " 
and  **  the  kingdom  of  heaven,"and  these 
names  themselves  indicate  that  the  place 
^\  of  God  in  the  order  of  things  which  they 
^  describe  is  the  all-important  thing  to  his 
mind. 

It   is  only  with  great  artificiality  that 


Introductory  7 

the  various  component  elements  of  our 
Lord's  teaching  can  be  subsumed  under 
the  one  head  of  the  kingdom.  If  any 
deduction  and  systematizing  are  to  be  at- 
tempted, logic  and  the  indications  which 
we  have  of  our  Lord 's  habit  of  thought 
on  this  point  alike  require,  that  not  his 
teaching  on  the  kingdom  but  that  on 
God  shall  be  given  the  highest  place. 
The  relation  observable  in  the  discourses 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel  between  the  per- 
son of  Christ  and  salvation,  is  also 
the  relation  which  we  may  conceive 
to  exist  between  God  and  the  kingdom. 
Because  God  is  what  he  is,  the  kingdom 
bears  the  character  and  embodies  the 
principles  which  as  a  matter  of  fact  belong 
to  it.  Even  so,  however,  we  should  avoid 
the  modern  mistake  of  endeavoring  to 
derive  the  idea  of  the  kingdom  from  the 
conception  of  the  divine  fatherhood  alone. 
This  derivation  expresses  an  important 
truth  recognized  by  Jesus  himself,  when 
he  calls  the  kingdom  a  fatherly  gift  to  the 


8    The  Kingdom  and  tJie  Church 

disciples,  Lk.  xii.  32.  But  it  represents 
only  one  side  of  the  truth,  for  in  the  king- 
dom other  attributes  of  God  besides  his 
fatherhood  find  expression.  The  doc- 
trine of  God  in  its  entire  fulness  alone 
is  capable  of  furnishing  that  broader  basis 
on  which  the  structure  of  his  teaching 
on  the  kingdom  can  be  built  in  agree- 
ment with  Jesus'  own  mind. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  cannot  be  denied 
that   in    many  respects  the  idea  of  the 
^,  ,  ,     kingdom  acted  in  our  Lord's  thought  and 
\  r*^   'Teaching  as  a  crystallizing  point  around 
which  several  other  elements  of  truth  nat- 
'  urally  gathered  and  grouped  themselves 
in  harmonious    combination.     That  the 
idea  of  the  church,  where  it  emerges  in 
his  teaching,  is  a  direct  outgrowth  of  the 
development  of  his  doctrine  of  the  king- 
dom, will  appear  in  the  sequel.     But  not 
only  this,  also   the  consummation  of  the 
world  and  the  final  state  of  glory  were 
evidently  viewed  by  him   in   no   other 
light  than  as  the  crowning  fulfilment  of 


Introductory  9 

the  kingdom-idea.  Still  further  what 
he  taught  about  righteousness  was  most 
closely  interlinked  in  his  mind  with  the 
truth  about  the  nature  of  the  kingdom. 
The  same  may  safely  be  affirmed  with 
reference  to  the  love  and  grace  of  God. 
The  great  categories  of  subjective  reli- 
gion, faith  and  repentance  and  regenera- 
tion, obviously  had  their  place  in  his 
thought  as  answering  to  certain  aspects 
of  the  kingdom.  Even  a  subject  appar- 
ently so  remote  from  the  kingdom-idea, 
in  our  usual  understanding  of  it,  as  that 
of  miracles  in  reality  derived  for  Jesus 
from  the  latter  the  larger  part  of  its 
meaning.  Finally,  the  kingdom  stood  in 
our  Lord's  mind  for  a  very  definite  con- 
ception concerning  the  historical  relation 
of  his  own  work  and  the  new  order  of 
things  introduced  by  it  to  the  Old  Testa- 
ment. All  this  can  here  be  stated  in 
general  only  ;  our  task  in  the  sequel  will 
be  to  work  it  out  in  detail.  But  what 
has  been  said  is  sufficient  to  show  that 


lo    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

there  is  scarcely  an  important  subject  in 
the  rich  repertoire  of  our  Lord's  teaching 
with  which  our  study  of  his  disclosures 
concerning  the  kingdom  of  God  will  not 
bring  us  into  contact. 


CHAPTER  II 

The  Kingdom  and  the  Old  Testa- 
ment 

^  W  HE  first  thing  to  be  noticed  in 
I  Jesus'  utterances  on  our  theme  is 
that  they  clearly  presuppose  a  con- 
sciousness on  his  part  of  standing  with 
his  work  on  the  basis  of  the  revelation 
of  God  in  the  Old  Testament.  Our 
Lord  occupies  historic  ground  from  the 
outset.  From  first  to  last  he  refers  to 
**the  kingdom  of  God  "  as  a  fixed  con- 
ception with  which  he  takes  for  granted, 
his  hearers  are  familiar.  In  affirming 
that  it  is  **at  hand"  he  moreover  as- 
cribes to  it  the  character  of  something 

II 


12   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

forming  part  of  that  world  of  prophecy, 
which  moves  onward  through  the  ages 
to  its  divinely  appointed  goal  of  fulfil- 
ment. It  were  utterly  out  of  harmony 
with  this  fundamental  principle  of  our 
Lord's  kingdom-gospel  to  represent  him 
as  the  founder  of  a  new  religion.  His 
work  was  the  realization  of  what  in 
the  ideal  form  of  prophecy  had  been 
known  and  expected  ages  before.  We 
simply  here  observe  at  a  peculiarly  vital 
point  what  underlies  as  a  broad  uniform 
basis  his  official  consciousness  every- 
where. No  array  of  explicit  statements 
in  which  he  acknowledges  his  accept- 
ance of  the  Old  Testament  Scriptures  as 
the  word  of  God  can  equal  in  force  this 
implied  subordination  of  himself  and  of 
his  work  to  the  one  great  scheme  of 
which  the  ancient  revelation  given  to 
Israel  formed  the  preparatory  stage. 
Indeed  in  appropriating  for  himself  the 
function  of  bringing  the  kingdom,  in 
laying  claim  to    the    Messianic  dignity. 


The  Old  Testament  13 

Jesus  seized  upon  that  in  the  Old  Testa- 
ment which  enabled  him  at  one  stroke 
to  make  its  whole  historic  movement 
converge  upon  and  terminate  in  himself. 
There  is  in  this  a  unique  combination  of 
the  most  subHme  self-consciousness  and 
the  most  humble  submission  to  the  rev- 
elation of  God  in  former  ages.  Jesus 
knew  himself  as  at  once  the  goal  of  his- 
tory and  the  servant  of  history. 

The  Old  Testament  knows  of  a  king- 
dom of  God  as  already  existing  at  that 
time.  Apart  from  the  universal  reign 
exercised  by  God  as  Creator  of  all  things, 
Jehovah  has  his  special  kingdom  in  Israel. 
The  classical  passage  relating  to  the  latter 
is  Exodus  xix.  4-6,  from  which  it  appears, 
that  the  making  of  the  covenant  at  Sinai 
established  this  relationship.  In  virtue 
of  it,  Jehovah,  besides  being  Israel's  God, 
also  acted  as  Israel's  national  King.  By 
direct  revelation  he  gave  them  laws  and 
by  his  subsequent  guidance  of  their  his- 
tory he  made  his  rule  a  living  reality. 


14   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Even  later,  when  human  kings  arose, 
these  had  no  other  rights  from  the  point 
of  view  of  the  legitimate  religion  than 
those  of  the  vicegerents  of  Jehovah.  The 
meaning  of  this  order  of  things  was  that 
in  Israel's  life  all  other  interests,  both 
public  and  private,  were  subordinated  to 
and  made  a  part  of  religion.  Whilst  else- 
where religion  was  a  function  of  the 
state,  here  the  state  became  a  function  of 
religion.  In  itself  this  idea  of  a  kingship 
exercised  by  the  deity  over  the  entire 
range  of  life  was  not  confined  to  the 
sphere  of  special  revelation.  Melekhy 
king,  was  a  common  name  for  the  god- 
head among  the  Semitic  tribes,  so  that  to 
some  extent,  the  principle  of  what  we 
call  **  the  theocracy  "was  known  to  them. 
But  the  relation  which  they  imagined  to 
exist  between  themselves  and  their  gods 
was  in  Israel  alone  a  matter  of  actual 
experience.  A  most  vivid  consciousness 
of  this  fact  pervades  the  entire  Old  Tes- 
tament. 


The  Old  Testament  15 

In  view  of  this  it  creates  some  surprised 
at  first  sight,  that  Jesus  never  speaks  of 
the  kingdom  of  God  as  previously  exist- 
ing. To  him  the  kingdom  is  through- 
out something  new,  now  first  to  be  real- 
ized. Even  of  John  the  Baptist  he  speaks 
as  not  being  in  the  kingdom,  because  his 
whole  manner  of  work  identified  him 
with  the  preceding  dispensation.  The 
law  and  the  prophets  are  until  John : 
from  that  time  the  gospel  of  the  king- 
dom of  God  is  preached,  Lk.  xvi.  16  ; 
Matt.  xi.  13.  There  are  only  two  pas- 
sages in  which  the  old  theocratic  order 
of  things  might  seem  to  be  referred  to 
under  the  name  of  the  kingdom.  In 
Matt.  viii.  12,  Jesus  calls  the  Jews  **  the 
sons  of  the  kingdom."  But  this  is  prob- 
ably meant  in  the  sense,  that  in  virtue  of 
the  promises  they  are  heirs  of  the  king- 
dom, not  in  the  sense  of  their  having  had 
the  kingdom  in  actual  possession  before 
the  coming  of  Christ.  On  the  same  prin- 
ciple we  must  probably  interpret  Matt. 


1 6   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

xxi.  43,  where  Jesus  predicts  that  the 
kingdom  of  God  shall  be  taken  away 
from  the  Jews  and  given  to  a  nation 
bringing  forth  the  fruits  thereof,  the  king- 
dom being  used  for  the  title  to  the 
kingdom.  Or,  if  the  literal  meaning  of 
the  words  be  pressed,  it  should  be  remem- 
bered, that  our  Lord  spoke  them  during 
the  later  stage  of  his  ministry,  at  a  time 
when  through  his  labors  the  kingdom  of 
God  in  its  new  and  highest  sense  had  been 
Lat  least  incipiently  realized. 

The  only  indirect  recognition  of  God's 
kingship  under  the  Old  Testament  is 
found  in  Matt.  v.  35,  where  Jerusalem 
Js  called  "the  city  of  the  great  King." 
'  When  the  question  is  put,  how  must 
we  explain  this  restriction  of  the  term 
by  Jesus  to  the  new  order  of  things, 
the  answer  cannot  of  course  be  sought 
in  any  lack  of  appreciation  on  his  part 
of  the  reasons  which  underlie  the  op- 
posite usage  prevailing  in  the  Old  Tes- 
tament.    Nor  can  the  reason  have  lain 


The  Old  Testament  17 

in  a  desire  to  accommodate  himself  to  the 
contemporary  Jewish  conception,  for, 
although  the  Jews  at  that  time  ex- 
pected the  kingdom  from  the  future, 
they  also  knew  it  in  another  sense  as 
already  present  with  them  through  the 
reign  of  God  in  the  law.  The  true 
explanation  is  undoubtedly  to  be  found 
in  the  absolute,  ideal  character  our  Lord 
ascribed  to  the  order  of  things  associated 
with  the  name  of  the  kingdom.  To  his 
mind  it  involved  such  altogether  new 
forces  and  such  unparalleled  blessings,  that 
all  relative  and  provisional  forms  pre- 
viously assumed  by  the  work  of  God  on 
earth  seemed  by  comparison  unworthy 
of  the  name.  Thus,  while  he  would  not 
have  denied  that  the  Old  Testament 
institutions  represented  a  real  kingdom 
of  God,  the  high  sense  with  which  he 
had  invested  the  term  made  it  unnatural 
for  him  to  apply  it  to  these.  ^ 

And  after  all  the  Old  Testament  itsel?! 
had  pointed  the  way  to  this  restricted 


1 8    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

usage  followed  by  our  Lord.  Side  by 
side  with  the  kingdom  that  is  we  meet 
in  the  Old  Testament  a  kingdom  yet  to 
come.  This  is  due  to  three  causes.  In 
the  first  place,  among  the  Semitic  tribes 
the  kingship  very  often  originated  by 
some  powerful  personality  performing 
great  acts  of  deliverance  and  obtaining  in 
result  of  this  a  position  of  preeminence,  as 
we  see  it  happen  in  the  case  of  Saul.  Thus, 
though  Jehovah  was  King,  he  never- 
theless could  perform  acts  in  the  future, 
work  deliverances  for  his  people,  such 
as  would  render  him  King  in  a  new  sense, 
cf.  Is.  xxiv.  21 ;  xliii.  15  ;  Hi.  7  ;  Mic.  ii. 
12 ;  iv.  6 ;  Obad.  21  ;  Ps.  xcvii.  1  ;  xcix. 
1.  Secondly,  the  suspension  of  the  visi- 
bly exercised  rule  of  Jehovah  during  the 
exile  naturally  led  to  the  representation, 
that  he  would  in  the  future  become  King 
by  resuming  his  reign.  It  is  especially 
in  the  Book  of  Daniel  that  the  idea  of  the 
future  kingdom  of  Jehovah  is  developed 
in  contrast  with   the  world-monarchies 


The  Old  Testament  19 

through  which  his  kingdom  appeared  in 
abeyance  for  the  present.  Thirdly,  the 
rise  of  Messianic  prophecy  had  the  natural 
result  of  projecting  the  true  kingdom  of 
God  into  the  future.  If  not  the  present 
king  was  the  ideal  representative  of 
Jehovah,  but  the  future  ruler  as  the 
prophets  depict  him,  then,  as  a  correlate 
of  this,  the  thought  would  suggest  itself 
that  with  this  new  ideal  instrument  the 
rule  of  God  in  its  full  ideal  sense  will  first 
be  realized.  The  expectation  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  became  equivalent  to  - 
the  Messianic  hope  of  Israel.  Now,  inas-  / 
much  as  our  Lord  knew  himself  to  be 
the  promised  Messiah  and  knew  that  the 
Messianic  King  had  had  his  typical  pred- 
ecessors under  the  Old  Testament,  we 
can  indirectly  show  that  the  conception 
of  the  theocracy  as  a  typical  kingdom  ofj 
God  cannot  have  been  unfamiliar  to  him. 
In  the  Gospels  both  the  thing  and  the 
name  of  the  kingdom  appear  familiar 
to  the  people  among  whom  Jesus  taught. 


20    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

cf.  Matt.  iii.  2 ;  Mk.  xv.  43  ;  Lk.  xiv. 
15  ;  xvii.  20.  It  would  be  rash,  however, 
to  infer  from  this,  that  Jesus  simply 
accommodated  himiself  in  his  mode  of 
speech  about  the  kingdom  to  the  pre- 
vailing usage  of  his  time.  The  way  in 
which  he  handled  the  conception  in  gen- 
eral not  only,  but  the  very  prominence 
to  which  he  raised  it,  bore  the  marks 
of  great  originality  and  were  productive 
of  the  most  momentous  changes  from  a 
religious  point  of  view.  This  can  be 
best  apprehended  if  we  place  our  Lord's 
usage  by  the  side  of  that  found  in  the 
contemporary  Jewish  literature.  Here, 
as  in  the  Old  Testament,  besides  the  divine 
kingship  over  the  world  both  the  present 
reign  of  Jehovah  over  Israel  and  his  fu- 
ture kingdom  are  referred  to.  In  these 
references  we  notice  two  peculiarities. 
The  first  is  that  the  kingdom  itself  is 
not  strictly  speaking  represented  as  fu- 
ture, but  only  the  enforcement  or  man- 
ifestation of  the  kingdom.     God's  rule 


The  Old  Testament  2i 

is  ever  existing,  only  at  present  it  is  not 
recognized.  In  the  future  the  world 
will  be  made  to  submit  to  it,  thus  the 
kingdom  is  manifested.  This  peculiarity 
is  the  result  of  the  one-sided  manner  in 
which  the  relation  of  God  to  his  people 
and  the  world  appeared  to  be  bound  up 
in  the  law.  Hence  the  Jewish  phrase, 
**  to  take  up  the  yoke  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  meaning  to  vow  obedience  to  the 
law.  The  second  peculiarity  consists  in 
the  rareness  with  which  even  in  this  qual- 
ified sense  the  Jewish  sources  speak  of 
God's  kingdom  as  a  future  thing.  In 
comparatively  few  cases,  where  the  new 
order  of  things  expected  in  the  Messianic 
age  is  referred  to,  does  the  name  king- 
dom of  God  appear  in  connection  with  it. 
This  cannot  be  accidental.  Probably  the 
reason  is  as  follows :  the  conception 
which  the  average  Jewish  mind  had 
framed  of  the  new  order  of  things  and 
the  interest  which  in  its  view  attached  to 
it,  were  not  sufficiently  God-centered  to 


22    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

favor  the  use  of  the  phrase  *'  kingdom  of 
God."  The  emphasis  was  placed  largely 
on  what  the  expected  state  would  bring 
for  Israel  in  a  national  and  temporal  sense. 
Hence  it  was  preferably  thought  of  as 
the  kingdom  of  Israel  over  the  other 
nations.  Or  the  place  of  the  kingdom- 
idea  was  taken  by  different  conceptions, 
such  as  that  of  '*  the  coming  age,"  which 
were  indefinite  enough  to  leave  room  for 
the  cherishing  of  the  same  self-centered 
hope. 

Now  it  is  from  a  comparison  with  these 
two  peculiarities  that  our  Lord's  prefer- 
ence for  the  name  "'  kingdom  of  God"  re- 
ceives its  proper  light.  While  to  the  mind 
of  Judaism  the  divine  rule  is  equivalent  to 
the  sovereignty  of  the  law,  Jesus,  though 
not  excluding  this,  knew  of  a  much 
larger  sphere  in  which  God  would 
through  saving  acts  exercise  his  glorious 
prerogatives  of  kingship  on  a  scale  and 
in  a  manner  unknown  before.  In  his 
teaching  the  kingdom   once   more   be- 


TJic  Old  Testament  23 

comes  a  kingdom  of  grace  as  well  as  of 
law,  and  thus  the  balance  so  beautifully 
preserved  in  the  Old  Testament  is  re- 
stored. 

The  consequence  of  this  was,  of  course, 
that  great  emphasis  had  to  be  thrown 
upon  the  newness  of  the  kingdom,  upon 
the  fact  of  its  being  and  bringing  some- 
thing more  than  the  reign  of  law  in  which 
the  Jews  found  their  ideal.  Thus  the 
Lord's  method  of  not  calling  even  the  Old 
Testament  legal  organization  the  king- 
dom may  have  been  partly  due  to  a  revolt 
in  his  mind  from  the  Jewish  perversion  of 
the  same.  Further,  by  making  the  idea 
as  prominent  as  he  did  in  his  teaching  and 
at  the  same  time  speaking  of  it  exclusively 
as  the  kingdom  of  God,  our  Lord  pro- 
tested against  the  popular  misconception  of 
it  as  a  national  kingdom  intended  to  bring 
Israel  supremacy  and  glory.  Finally, 
through  the  enlargement  which  the  idea 
of  God's  reign  had  undergone,  so  that  it 
stood  for  a  reign  of  saving  grace  as  well 


24    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

as  of  law,  it  became  possible  for  our  Lord 
to  subsume  under  the  notion  of  the  king- 
dom the  entire  complex  of  blessing  and 
glory  which  the  coming  order  of  things 
would  involve  for  the  people  of  God, 
and  yet  to  keep  before  men's  minds  the 
thought  that  this  new  world  of  enjoy- 
ment was  to  be  enjoyed  as  a  world  of 
God.  Thus  by  bringing  the  name  of 
**  God's  kingdom"  and  the  whole  content 
of  the  Messianic  hopes  of  Israel  together, 
he  imparted  to  the  latter  the  highest  ideal 
character,  a  supreme  religious  consecra- 
ftion. 


CHAPTER   III 

Kingdom  and  Kingship.  The 
Kingdom  of  God  and  the  King- 
dom of  Heaven 

^  J  'he  Greek  word  Basileia  used  in 
/  the  Gospels  for  *'  kingdom  "  and 
the  corresponding  Hebrew  and 
Aramaic  words,  suchasAf^/^z//^and  Mem- 
lakhah,  can,  like  many  words  in  the  Eng- 
lish language,  designate  the  same  concep- 
tion from  two  distinct  points  of  view. 
They  may  stand  for  the  kingdom  as  some- 
thing abstract,  the  kingship  or  rule  exer- 
cised by  the  king.  Or  they  may  describe 
the  kingdom  as  something  concrete,  the 
territory,  the  sum  total  of  the  subjects  and 

25 


26    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

possessions  ruled  over,  including  what- 
ever of  rights,  privileges  and  advantages 
are  enjoyed  in  this  sphere.  Now  the 
question  arises,  in  which  sense  did  our 
Lord  mean  the  phrase  when  he  spoke  of 
the  "kingdom  of  God."  In  the  Old 
Testament  where  a  kingdom  is  ascribed 
either  to  Jehovah  or  to  some  human 
power,  the  abstract  sense  is  usually  the 
one  intended,  although  in  some  of  the 
latest  writings  of  the  Old  Testament  ex- 
amples of  the  concrete  usage  occur,  with 
reference  always,  however,  to  human 
kingdoms.  God's  kingdom  is  here  al- 
ways his  reign,  his  rule,  never  his  do- 
main. When  Obadiah  predicts  ''  the 
kingdom  shall  be  the  Lord's,"  his  mean- 
ing is  that  in  the  future  to  Jehovah  will 
belong  the  supremacy.  That  such  was 
also  the  common  Jewish  usage  in  our 
Lord's  time  appears  from  the  manner  in 
which  the  supremacy  of  Israel  over  the 
nations  is  associated  with  the  idea  of  the 
kingdom. 


Kingdom  and  Kingship       27 

We  have  already  seen  that  the 
relative  absence  of  the  phrase  **  the 
kingdom  of  God"  from  the  Jewish 
sources  points  to  the  same  conclusion, 
for  it  was  a  lack  of  interest  in  the  truth 
that  Jehovah  would  be  supreme  that 
prevented  this  phrase  from  becoming 
popular.  On  the  other  hand,  to  Jesus 
the  thought  that  God  would  rule  was  a 
glorious  thought  which  filled  his  soul 
with  the  most  sacred  joy.  In  so  far  it 
is  undoubtedly  correct  when  modern 
writers  insist  that  in  interpreting  our 
Lord's  sayings  the  meaning  "reign," 
**  kingship,"  shall  be  our  point  of  depart- 
ure, and  warn  against  the  misleading  as- 
sociations of  the  English  word  *'  king- 
dom," which  in  modern  usage  practically 
always  means  the  territory  or  realm.  Still 
it  is  advisable  to  proceed  slowly  here. 
Attention  has  already  been  called  to  the 
significant  enlargement  which  Jesus  in- 
troduced into  the  current  use  of  the 
phrase.     If  to  him  it  covered  all  the  priv- 


y 


28    The  Kingdom  a7id  the  Church 

ileges  and  blessings  which  flow  from  the 
coming  reign  of  God,  then  it  is  plain  how 
inevitably  it  would  tend  in  his  mouth 
to  become  a  concrete  designation.  From 
meaning  at  first  **  a  rule  "  it  would  begin 
to  mean,  if  not  a  territory  or  body  of 
subjects,  at  least  a  realm,  a  sphere  of  life, 
a  state  of  things,  all  of  these  more  or  less 
locally  conceived.  To  be  sure,  even 
so  the  connotation  would  always  remain, 
that  the  kingdom  thus  understood  is  pos- 
sessed and  therefore  pervaded  by  God, 
but  after  all  the  rendering  **  reign  of 
God  "  would  no  longer  apply.  In  point 
of  fact  a  single  glance  at  the  Gospel-dis- 
courses shows  how  utterly  impossible  it 
is  to  carry  through  the  abstract  rendering 
in  each  single  instance  where  our  Lord 
speaks  of  the  kingdom  of  God. 

Briefly  stated  the  matter  stands  as  fol- 
lows :  In  a  few  instances  the  translation 
*'  reign  "  is  required  by  the  connection,  as 
when  it  is  said  *'  the  Son  of  man  shall  come 
in  his  kingdom."     In  some  other  cases, 


Kingdom  and  Kingship       29 

less  rare  than  the  foregoing,  it  is  possible, 
perhaps  slightly  more  plausible,  to  adopt 
the  abstract  rendering,  as  when  we  read 
of  the  kingdom  **  coming,"  **  appear- 
ing," *'  being  at  hand,"  *'  being  seen,"  al- 
though in  these  and  other  instances  no 
one  can  maintain  that  the  substitution  of 
the  concrete  would  make  the  sense  un- 
natural. While  neither  meaning  is  un- 
suitable, one  may  in  such  cases  for  general 
reasons  be  inclined  to  believe,  that  the 
thought  of  a  revelation  of  God's  royal 
power  lay  uppermost  in  our  Lord's  mind. 
Then  there  are  a  great  number,  perhaps 
the  majority,  of  passages  in  which  the 
note  of  the  concrete  plainly  predominates. 
When  the  figure  is  that  of  **  calling"  to 
the  kingdom  of  God,  of  **  entering  "  into 
it,  of  its  being  '*  shut  "  or  of  people  being 
**  cast  out "  from  it,  of  its  being  ''  sought," 
*'  given,"  '*  possessed,"  **  received,"  **  in- 
herited," everybody  feels,  that  in  such 
modes  of  speech  not  the  exercise  of  the 
divine  rule  itself,  but  the  resulting  order 


30    TJie  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

of  things,  the  complex  of  blessings  pro- 
duced by  it,  the  sphere  in  which  it  works, 
stand  before  the  speaker's  mind.  Taking 
this  into  consideration  we  may  say  that, 
if  hasileia  is  everywhere  to  be  rendered 
by  the  same  word,  that  word  ought  to 
be  **  kingdom."  To  introduce  a  distinc- 
tion and  translate  in  some  cases  *'  reign," 
in  other  cases  *' kingdom,"  is  obviously 
impracticable,  because,  as  above  stated, 
in  a  number  of  cases  we  have  no  data  for 
choosing  between  the  two. 

Even  less  satisfactory  is  the  recent  pro- 
posal to  translate  everywhere  **  the  sover- 
eignty of  God,"  for  not  only  is  this 
unsuitable  for  all  sayings  in  which  the  con- 
crete usage  of  the  term  is  undoubtedly  fol- 
lowed, it  also  fails  to  express  with  fulness 
and  accuracy  the  abstract  sense  where 
this  may  be  recognized.  Sovereignty 
denotes  a  relation  existing  by  right,  even 
where  it  is  not  actually  enforced.  In  the 
case  of  God,  therefore,  it  can  be  scarcely 
said  to  come.      The   divine  hasileia  in- 


Kingdom  and  Kingship       31 

eludes,  as  we  have  seen,  besides  a  right 
to  rule,  the  actual  energetic  forth-putting 
of  God's  royal  power  in  acts  of  salvation. 
Besides  '*the  kingdom  of  God"  we 
find  *'the  kingdom  of  heaven."  The 
Evangelist  Matthew  uses  this  well-nigh 
exclusively ;  only  in  vi.  33 ;  xii.  28  ; 
xiii.  43 ;  xxi.  31,  43  ;  xxvi.  29,  does  he 
write  **  the  kingdom  of  God  "  or  **  the 
kingdom  of  my"  or  *' their  Father," 
whereas  '*  the  kingdom  of  heaven  "  oc- 
curs more  than  thirty  times  in  his  Gos- 
pel. In  Chap.  xii.  28  the  use  of 
**  God  "  instead  of  *'  heaven  "  is  explained 
by  the  preceding  '*  Spirit  of  God  ;"  in  the 
two  other  instances  in  Chap,  xxi,  no 
reason  for  the  substitution  is  apparent. 
In  Mark  and  Luke  **  the  kingdom  of 
heaven  "  is  not  found.  This  raises  the 
question,  which  of  these  two  versions 
more  literally  reproduces  the  usage  of 
Jesus  himself.  In  all  probability  Mat- 
thew's does,  since  no  good  reason  can  be  y 
assigned,  why  he  should  have  substituted 


32    TJie  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

**the  kingdom  of  heaven,"  whilst  a  suf- 
ficiently plausible  reason  for  the  opposite 
procedure  on  the  part  of  Mark  and  Luke 
can  be  found,  in  the  fact,  that,  writing 
for  Gentile  readers,  they  might  think 
such  a  typically  Jewish  phrase,  as  "  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  "  less  intelligible  than 
the  plain  "  kingdom  of  God. "  Of  course, 
in  holding  this,  we  need  not  imply  that 
in  each  individual  case,  where  the  first 
Evangelist  has ''  kingdom  of  heaven,"  this 
phrase  was  actually  employed  by  Jesus. 
All  we  mean  to  afiirm  is  the  general  prop- 
osition that  Jesus  used  both  phrases,  and 
that  in  so  far  Matthew  has  preserved  for 
us  an  item  of  information  no  longer  ob- 
tainable from  the  other  two  Synoptical 
Gospels. 

But  what  were  the  origin  and  mean- 
ing of  this  phrase  "the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  and  what  light  does  it  throw  on 
our  Lord's  conception  of  the  kingdom  ? 
Among  the  later  Jews  a  tendency  existed 
to  forego  employing  the  name  of  God. 


Kingdom  and  Kingship      33 

Various  substitutes  were  current  and 
**  heaven  "  was  one  of  these.  Apart  from 
the  phrase  under  discussion,  traces  of  this 
mode  of  speech  are  found  in  Matt.  xvi. 
19;  Mk.  xi.30;  Lk.  xv.  18,  21.  It  was  a 
mode  of  speech  which  had  arisen  from 
the  Jewish  habit  of  emphasizing  in  the 
nature  of  God  more  than  anything  else 
his  exaltation  above  the  world  and  un- 
approachable majesty,  to  such  an  extent 
even  as  to  endanger  what  must  ever  be 
the  essence  of  religion,  a  true  communion 
between  God  and  man.  But  this  custom, 
though  exponential  of  a  characteristic 
fault  of  Judaism,  had  also  its  good  side, 
else  our  Lord  would  not  have  adopted  it. 
In  his  human  nature  Jesus  had  a  profound 
sense  of  the  infinite  distance  between 
God  and  the  creature.  Whatever  there 
was  of  genuine  religious  fear  and  rever- 
ence of  God  in  the  Jewish  consciousness 
awakened  an  echo  in  his  heart  and  found 
in  him  its  ideal  expression,  from  which 
all  the  one-sidedness  that  belonged  to  it 


34    TJie  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

in  Judaism  had  disappeared.  If,  there- 
fore, Jesus  spoke  of  God  as  heaven,  this 
did  not  spring  from  a  superstitious  fear 
of  naming  God,  but  rather  from  a  desire 
to  name  him  in  such  a  way  as  to  call  up 
at  once  the  most  exalted  conception  of 
his  being  and  character.  To  do  this  the 
word  ** heaven"  was  eminently  fitted 
since  it  draws  man's  thought  upwards 
to  the  place  where  God  reveals  his  glory 
in  perfection. 

This  can  best  be  felt  in  another 
phrase  which  likewise  among  the  Evan- 
gelists Matthew  alone  has  preserved  for 
us,  and  which  likewise  our  Lord  had  in 
common  with  the  Jewish  teachers  of  that 
age,  the  phrase  **the  Father  in  heaven" 
or  **  the  heavenly  Father."  If  in  this  the 
name  **  Father "  expresses  the  conde- 
scending love  and  grace  of  God,  his  infinite 
nearness  to  us,  the  qualification  **in 
heaven  "  adds  the  reminder  of  his  infinite 
majesty  above  us,  by  which  the  former 
ought  always  to  be  held  in  balance  lest 


Kingdom  and  Kingship      35 

we  injure  the  true  spirit  of  religion.  I? 
may  be  affirmed,  therefore,  that,  when 
Jesus  referred  to  ''the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  he  meant  this  in  no  other  sense 
than  ''the  kingdom  of  God,"  except  in 
so  far  as  there  was  an  added  note  of 
emphasis  on  the  exalted  nature  of  him 
whose  kingdom  this  is.  -J 

The  word  "heaven,"  however,  al- 
though it  primarily  qualifies  God  and 
describes  his  greatness,  not  that  of  the 
kingdom,  must  also  have  been  intended 
by  our  Lord  to  color  the  conception 
of  the  latter.  If  the  king  be  one  who 
concentrates  in  himself  all  the  glory  of 
heaven,  what  must  his  kingdom  be  ? 
We  shall  not  go  far  amiss  in  saying 
that  J  esus  desired  to  awaken  in  his  disciples 
a  sense  of  the  mysterious  supernatural 
character,  of  the  absolute  perfection  and 
grandeur,  of  the  supreme  value  pertaining 
to  this  new  order  of  things,  and  desired 
them  to  view  and  approach  it  in  a  spirit 
appreciative  of  these  holy  qualities.     Al- 


36    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

though  the  phrase  "  kingdom  of  heaven  ' ' 
is  not  found  in  the  Old  Testament,  the 
word  **  heaven  "  appears  there  already  in 
significant  association  with  the  idea  of  the 
future  kingdom.  In  Daniel  it  is  said 
that  **  the  God  of  heaven  "  will  set  up  a 
kingdom,  and  this  means  that  the  new 
reign  will  take  its  origin  in  a  supernatural 
manner  from  the  higher  world.  To 
Jesus  also  **  heaven  "  and  the  supernatural 
were  cognate  ideas,  cf.  Matt.  xvi.  17  ; 
Mk.  xi.  30.  That  the  thought  of  the 
absolute  perfection  of  the  heavenly 
world  as  determinative  of  the  character 
of  the  kingdom  may  well  have  been 
associated  with  the  name  *'  kingdom 
of  heaven  "  in  Jesus'  mind,  appears  from 
the  close  connection  between  the  second 
and  third  petitions  in  the  Lord's  prayer : 
**  Thy  kingdom  come — Thy  will  be  done, 
as  in  heaven,  so  on  earth,"  cf.  also 
Matt.  V.  48.  For  heaven  as  the  sphere 
of  supreme  unchangeable  values  and  the 
goal  of  aspiration  we  may  refer  to  such 


Kingdom  and  Kingship      37 

words  as  Matt.  v.  12 ;  vi.  20.  In  view 
of  the  profound  significance  which  Jesus 
throughout  ascribed  to  the  contrast  be- 
tween the  heavenly  and  the  earthly  world, 
it  is  hardly  likely  that  heaven  was  to  him 
a  mere  formal  circumlocution  for  God. 
It  meant  not  God  in  general,  but  God  as 
known  and  revealed  in  those  celestial 
regions  which  had  been  our  Lord's  eter- 
nal home.  Only  with  this  in  mind  can 
we  hope  to  understand  something  of  the 
profound  sense  in  which  he  called  the 
kingdom  **a  kingdom  of  heaven." 


CHAPTER  IV 

The  Present  mid  the  Futttre  King- 
dom 

T  T 7^^  have  already  seen   that   our 
1^^     Lord  makes  a  sharp  distinction 
between  the  Old  Testament  or- 
der of  things  and  the  kingdom  of  God, 
and  in  doing  this  conforms  to  that  side 
of   the    Old    Testament    representation 
which  itself  looks  upon  the  kingdom  as 
future.     Now  the  very  important  ques- 
tion arises :  how  did  he  conceive  of  the 
coming  of  this  kingdom  both  as  to  time 
and  manner  ?      Until  not  long  ago  the 
view  quite  generally  prevailed  and  was 
38 


Present  mid  Future  Kingdom    39 

thought  to  be  in  harmony  with  Jesus'  own 
teaching,  that  the  coming  referred  to 
might  be  conceived  of  as  a  lengthy  proc- 
ess covering  ages  and  reaching  its  consum- 
mation by  a  sudden  crisis  at  the  end  coin- 
ciding with  the  second  coming  of  Christ 
and  the  end  of  the  present  world.  And 
this  prolonged  process,  in  distinction  from 
the  final  crisis,  was  supposed  to  consist  in 
our  Lord's  view  of  essentially  inward, 
spiritual,  invisible  changes.  The  king- 
dom, it  was  believed,  comes  when  the  gos- 
pel is  spread,  hearts  are  changed,  sin  and 
error  overcome,  righteousness  cultivated, 
a  living  communion  with  God  established. 
In  this  sense  the  kingdom  began  its  com- 
ing when  Jesus  entered  upon  his  public 
ministry,  his  work  upon  earth,  including 
his  death,  was  part  of  its  realization,  the 
disciples  were  in  it,  the  whole  subsequent 
history  of  the  church  is  the  history  of  its 
gradual  extension,  we  ourselves  can  act 
our  part  in  its  onward  movement  and  are 
members  of  it  as  a  present  organization. 


40    The  Kingdom  mid  the  Church 

In  recent  years,  however,  this  view  has 
been  subjected  to  severe  criticism  by  a 
certain  group  of  writers  and  rejected  as 
unhistorical.  It  is  claimed,  that  Jesus 
took  an  entirely  different  view  of  the 
matter  than  that  outlined  above.  Jesus 
did  not  for  a  moment  think  that  by  his 
prophetic  activity  or  by  any  spiritual 
changes  thus  wrought  among  Israel,  the 
kingdom  would  come.  All  that  he 
meant  to  accomplish  by  his  labors  was 
merely  preparatory  to  its  coming :  the 
people  had  to  be  made  ready  for  its  ap- 
pearance. To  introduce  the  kingdom 
was  God's  work,  not  his.  No  man  could 
do  anything  towards  either  hastening 
or  delaying  it.  And  when  it  came  it 
would  come  at  one  single  stroke,  by  a 
sudden  supernatural  interposition  of  God, 
in  a  great  world-crisis,  consequently  not 
for  a  part  but  with  its  whole  content  all 
at  once,  fulfilling  all  the  promises,  giving 
the  signal  by  its  arrival  for  the  end  of 
the  present  world.     And  this  stupendous 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom    41 

event  Jesus  expected  to  happen  in  his 
lifetime,  or,  after  he  had  attained  to  the 
certainty  of  his  intervening  death,  at  least 
within  the  time  of  the  then  living  genera- 
tion. 

Before  endeavoring  to  test  which  of 
these  two  opposing  views  is  in  accord 
with  our  Lord's  teaching,  we  must  care- 
fully note  the  real  point  of  divergence 
between  them  and  must  also  make  clear 
to  ourselves  what  issues  are  at  stake  in  our 
decision  in  favor  of  the  one  or  the  other. 
The  two  views  have  this  in  common  that 
they  both  recognize  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  in  its  final  absolute  sense  to 
have  been  associated  by  Jesus  with  the  end 
of  the  world.  The  older  view  therefore 
is  inclusive  of  the  more  recent  one,  and 
the  difference  arises  from  the  fact  that  the 
former  affirms  something  more  which 
the  latter  denies.  The  sole  point  in. dis- 
pute concerns  our  right  to  ascribe  to 
Jesus  such  a  conception  of  the  kingdom 
that  he  could  also  find  the  beginning  of 


42    The  Kingdom  and  the  Chitrch 

its  arrival  in  the  purely  spiritual  results  of 
his  labors  and  accordingly  extend  this 
gradual  coming  of  it  over  an  indefinite 
period  of  time. 

But  this  sole  point  at  issue  is  fraught 
with  the  gravest  consequences  as  it  is 
decided  one  way  or  the  other.  For, 
first  of  all,  it  involves  the  question  of 
the  infallibility  of  our  Lord  as  a  relig- 
ious teacher.  If  he  expected  and  an- 
nounced only  one  coming  of  the  king- 
dom and  that  to  happen  shortly  within 
his  lifetime  or  the  lifetime  of  that 
generation — then  there  is  no  escape  from 
the  conclusion  that  the  outcome  has 
proved  him  mistaken.  Secondly,  the 
distribution  of  emphasis  in  our  Lord's 
teaching  becomes  essentially  different  if 
we  adopt  the  most  modern  view  on  this 
matter.  By  common  consent  the  center 
of  gravity  in  his  preaching,  that  to  which 
he  attaches  supreme  importance,  is  the 
kingdom.  Now,  if  we  may  believe  that 
this  kingdom  was  to  him  in  part  identical 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  43 

with  the  existence  of  certain  spiritual 
states,  such  as  righteousness  and  com- 
munion with  God,  then  these  receive 
with  the  kingdom  the  highest  place  in 
our  Lord's  estimation  of  values.  If,  on 
the  other  hand,  these  He  outside  of  the 
kingdom  and  are  mere  preparatory  states, 
then  they  lose  their  central  position  and 
become  means  to  an  ulterior  end  consist- 
ing in  the  kingdom.  In  the  third  place, 
the  controversy  affects  the  character  of 
our  Lord's  ethics.  The  advocates  of  the 
recent  view  believe  that  Jesus'  conviction 
with  reference  to  the  rapidly  approach- 
ing end  of  the  world  largely  colored  his 
ethical  views,  in  that  it  prevented  him 
from  developing  a  positive  interest  for 
the  duties  which  pertain  to  this  present 
life.  Finally,  the  conception  of  our  Lord's 
character  itself  may  be  said  to  be  involved. 
Some  at  least  who  ascribe  to  him  such 
high-strung  expectations  seek  to  explain 
this  on  the  theory,  that  he  was  an  ecstatic 
visionary  person,  rather  than  a  man  of 


^ 


44    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

calm,  equable  spiritual  temper.  It  thus 
appears  that  the  aspect  of  our  Lord's 
kingdom-doctrine  now  under  discussion 
is  interlinked  with  the  gravest  problems 
touching  the  value  and  authority  of  his 
[character  and  work  in  general. 

It  must  be  admitted  that  the  Old  Tes- 
tament does  not  distinguish  between  sev- 
eral stages  or  phases  in  the  fulfilment  of 
the  promises  regarding  the  kingdom,  but 
looks  upon  its  coming  as  an  undivided 
whole.  John  the  Baptist  also  seems  to 
have  still  occupied  this  Old  Testament 
standpoint.  This,  however,  was  due  to 
the  peculiar  character  of  prophecy  in 
general,  in  which  there  is  a  certain  lack 
of  perspective,  a  vision  of  things  sep- 
arated in  time  on  one  plane.  We  may 
not  argue  from  this,  that  Jesus,  who  was 
more  than  a  prophet  and  stood  face  to 
face  with  the  reality,  must  have  been 
subject  to  the  same  limitations.  Nor  are 
we  justified  in  saying,  that,  because  con- 
temporary Judaism  took  such  a  view  of 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  45 

the  matter,  Jesus  likewise  must  have 
held  this.  For,  on  the  one  hand,  Juda- 
ism was  no  norm  for  him  ;  on  the  other 
hand,  within  Judaism  itself  a  distinction 
between  successive  stages  in  the  fulfil- 
ment of  the  Messianic  promises  had  al- 
ready arisen. 

We  have  seen  that  the  Jews  were 
accustomed  to  look  forward  not  so 
much  to  an  entirely  new  and  first 
arrival  of  the  kingdom,  but  rather  to  a 
manifestation  of  God's  rule  in  a  higher 
form.  And  even  within  the  limits  of 
this  future  manifestation  of  the  kingdom 
stages  had  begun  to  be  distinguished. 
The  idea  of  a  preliminary  Messianic 
kingdom  on  earth  lasting  for  a  definite 
number  of  years,  to  be  followed  by  the 
consummation  of  the  world  and  an  eter- 
nal kingdom  under  totally  new  con- 
ditions may  possibly  have  been  developed 
as  early  as  our  Lord's  day.  In  the  later 
teaching  of  the  New  Testament  a  some- 
what similar   distinction  certainly  exists, 


46    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

as  when  Paul  distinguishes  between  the 
present  reign  of  Christ,  dating  from  the 
resurrection,  and  the  final  state  after  he 
shall  have  delivered  the  kingdom  to  the 
Father,  1  Cor.  xv.  23-28. 

The  view,  therefore,  that  the  kingdom 
might  be  present  in  one  sense,  and  yet  have 
to  come  in  another,  did  not  lie  beyond  the 
doctrinal  horizon  of  Judaism  even,  and 
we  must  a  priori  reckon  with  the  possi- 
bility that  in  some  form  or  other  this  view 
may  appear  also  in  the  teaching  of  Jesus. 
In  point  of  fact  certain  statements  of 
Jesus  concerning  the  kingdom  as  an  in- 
ward spiritual  state  strongly  resemble  the 
Jewish  representation,  e.  g.  the  words 
in  Mk.  X.  15  about  "receiving  the  king- 
dom of  God  "  sound  like  an  adaptation 
of  the  Jewish  figure  which  speaks  of 
"  taking  up  the  yoke  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven,"  cf.  also  Matt.  xiii.  52. 
'  The  difference  between  this  Jewish  rep- 
resentation and  Jesus'  idea  of  the  prelimi- 
nary kingdom  lies  in  this,  that  according 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom   47 

to  the  Jewish  view  the  kingdom  is  always 
there,  it  being  only  a  question  whether 
man  will  take  it  upon  himself,  whereas 
according  to  Jesus,  who  thought  less  of 
human  efforts,  but  had  a  deeper  insight 
into  the  sinfulness  of  man  and  a  higher 
conception  of  what  the  true  reign  of  God 
involves,  even  this  partial  kingdom  must 
first  come  through  an  act  of  God  before 
man  can  be  invited  to  receive  it.  As  to 
the  other  point  of  contact  in  the  Jewish 
expectation,  it  should  be  remembered 
that  the  intermediate  kingdom  was  to 
begin  with  the  appearance  of  the  Mes- 
siah. If  then  Jesus  regarded  himself 
even  while  on  earth  as  the  Messiah  and 
as  engaged  in  Messianic  work,  which  we 
have  no  reason  to  doubt,  he  must  also 
have  looked  upon  the  stage  of  this  earthly 
Messianic  labor  as  a  provisional  stage  of 
realization  of  the  kingdom.  Of  course 
here  again  he  transformed  the  Jewish 
conception  by  his  spiritualizing  touch 
into    something    entirely   different    and 


48   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

infinitely  higher   than   what  it  was  be- 
[fore. 

Coming  to  the  facts  themselves  we  ob- 
serve that  no  one  denies  the  presence  of 
Q\  the  idea  of  a  spiritual  provisional  king- 
^dom  in  the  gospel  record  of  Jesus' 
teaching  as  it  lies  before  us.  The  view 
that  Jesus  did  not  entertain  this  idea,  of 
necessity  involves  ascribing  to  the  Evan- 
gelists an  unhistorical  representation  of 
what  our  Lord  actually  taught.  It  is  al- 
leged that  the  gospel-tradition  on  this 
point  was  colored  by  the  later  develop- 
ment of  things,  which  showed  that  a 
long  time  had  to  intervene  between  the 
first  and  second  coming  of  the  Lord  and 
therefore  compelled  the  assuming  of  a 
provisional  kingdom  of  protracted  dura- 
tion. Upon  this  critical  phase  of  the 
question  our  present  limits  and  purposes 
forbid  us  to  enter.  We  only  note  it  to 
remark  that  for  those  who  hold  to  the 
historical  trustworthiness  of  the  Gospels 
!^no  doubt  can  here  exist.     The  present 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom   49 

spiritual  kingdom  is  by  common  consent 
plainly  recognized  in  such  sayings  as 
Matt.  xi.  11  ;  xiii.  41  ;  xvi.  19.  J 

Apart,  however,  from  critical  attempts 
to  eliminate  this  element  from  Jesus' 
teaching  efforts  have  been  made  to  attain 
the  same  object  by  means  of  exegesis, 
and  into  these  we  must  briefly  look 
while  examining  the  available  evidence. 
Clearest  of  all  seem  the  words  spoken  by 
our  Lord  in  answer  to  the  Pharisees  who 
had  accused  him  of  being  in  league  with 
Beelzebub  :  '*  If  I  by  the  Spirit  (Lk. 
finger)  of  God  cast  out  demons,  then  the 
kingdom  of  God  has  come  upon  you. " 
The  underlying  supposition  of  this  ar- 
gument is,  that,  where  the  kingdom  of 
Satan  is  destroyed,  there  of  necessity  the 
kingdom  of  God  begins.  If  the  former 
already  took  place  at  that  time,  then  the 
latter  also  had  become  a  present  reality. 
Now  it  has  been  urged,  that  this  saying 
proves  nothing  in  favor  of  the  usual  con- 
ception  of  a   spiritual   kingdom   to   be 


50   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

gradually  realized,  because  our  Lord 
might  look  upon  the  casting  out  of  de- 
mons and  other  miracles  as  signals  of  the 
rapidly  approaching  final  coming  of  the 
kingdom,  the  beginning  as  it  were  of  the 
end. 

In  answer  to  this  we  observe  that, 
even  if  this  were  a  correct  interpretation, 
the  presence  of  a  certain  element  of  grad- 
ualness  in  our  Lord's  conception  of  the 
matter  would  thereby  be  in  principle  ad- 
mitted. The  coming  would  not  be  en- 
tirely abrupt,  there  would  be  not  only 
premonitions  but  actual  anticipations. 
But  it  is  impossible  to  interpret  the  words 
in  the  above  sense,  because  at  an  early 
point  of  his  career  our  Lord  looked  for- 
ward to  his  death  as  something  that  had 
to  intervene  before  all  things  could  be  ful- 
filled, so  that  he  could  not  have  regarded 
his  conquest  over  the  demons  as  imme- 
diately preceding  and  heralding  the  end. 
His  meaning  must  be,  that  when  Satan's 
power  ceases,  a  new  order  of  things  be- 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  51 

gins,  which  in  itself  is  equivalent  to  the 
rule  of  God.  In  one  respect  only  it  will 
have  to  be  conceded  that  the  saying  un- 
der discussion  does  not  embody  the  full 
idea  of  the  spiritual  kingdom  of  God. 
It  proves  the  actual  presence  of  the  king- 
dom at  the  time  of  our  Lord's  ministry, 
but  does  not  directly  affirm  that  this 
kingdom  has  its  reality  in  inward,  invisible 
states.  The  casting  out  of  demons  like 
other  miracles  belongs  rather  to  the  out- 
ward, visible  sphere. 

The  same  qualification  will  have  to 
apply  to  another  passage  at  least  in  one 
of  the  two  renderings  of  which  it  is  cap- 
able. According  to  Lk.  xvii.  21  Jesus 
answered  the  question  of  the  Pharisees 
as  to  the  time  of  the  appearance  of  the 
kingdom  of  God  by  declaring  **  behold 
the  kingdom  of  God  is  lvTo<i  vjxcov.'- 
This  may  mean:  ''within  you,"  or  it 
may  mean  *'in  your  midst."  In  the 
former  case  both  the  spiritual  nature  and 
the  present   reality  are  affirmed,  in  the 


52    The  Kingdom  and  the  Chnrch 

latter  case  only  the  presence  of  the  king- 
dom in  some  form  at  the  time  of  speak- 
ing is  implied.  Recently  it  has  been  as- 
serted that  on  the  rendering  ''in  your 
midst"  even  the  last-mentioned  inference 
is  not  warranted,  because  our  Lord 
speaks  of  the  future,  and  means  to  say : 
at  its  final  appearance  the  kingdom  of 
God  does  not  come  so  as  to  be  subject 
to  observation  or  calculation ;  people 
will  not  be  able  to  say,  "Here  or  there," 
lo,  all  at  once  it  will  be  in  your  midst. 
But  this  is  untenable  because  from  other 
sayings  we  know,  that  the  final  com- 
ing of  the  kingdom  is  preceded  by 
certain  signs  and  in  so  far  is  actually 
subject  to  observation  and  calculation. 
We  must  choose  between  the  two  ren- 
derings given  above,  and  of  these  the 
second,  "in  your  midst,"  deserves  the 
preference  for  two  reasons  :  first,  because 
it  suits  best  the  purpose  of  the  question 
of  the  Pharisees,  which  was  as  to  the 
time  of  the  coming  of  the  kingdom,  not 


Present  and  Fnture  Kingdom   53 

as  to  its  sphere,  and  because  of  the 
unbeHeving  Pharisees  it  could  scarcely  be 
said  that  the  kingdom  was  "  within  "  them. 
Our  Lord  means  to  teach  the  enquirers 
that,  instead  of  a  future  thing  to  be  fixed 
by  apocalyptic  speculation,  the  coming  of 
the  kingdom  is  a  present  thing,  present 
in  the  very  midst  of  those  who  are  cu- 
rious about  the  day  and  the  hour  of  its 
sometime  appearance.  Now  this  does 
not  directly  explain  how  the  kingdom  is 
present.  The  view  remains  possible  that 
Jesus  referred  to  miraculous  works  as 
one  form  of  the  manifestation  of  God's 
royal  power,  in  which  case  this  saying 
would  not  carry  us  beyond  the  foregoing 
about  the  casting  out  of  demons.  But 
the  view  is  equally  plausible,  that  he  re- 
ferred to  the  establishment  of  God's 
rule  in  the  midst  of  Israel  through  the 
spiritual  results  of  his  labors. 

Another  statement  which  clearly 
teaches  both  the  actual  presence  of  the 
kingdom  and  its  spiritual  form  of  exist- 


54    The  Kingdofn  and  the  Church 

ence  is  Matt.  xi.  12  ;  Lk.  xvi.  16.  Here 
"the  law  and  the  prophets  "  are  said  to 
extend  until  John,  that  is  to  say,  the 
prophetic  looking-forward  dispensation 
of  the  old  covenant  reaches  its  close  in 
John :  from  there  onward  begins  a  dis- 
pensation in  which  the  kingdom  of  God 
is  the  theme  no  longer  of  prophecy,  but 
of  gospel-preaching,  therefore  is  no 
longer  future  but  present.  John  him- 
self is  not  in  this  kingdom  while  others 
are.  This,  of  course,  cannot  apply  to 
the  final  kingdom,  for  from  this  Jesus 
certainly  could  not  have  excluded  the 
Baptist.  It  can  only  mean,  that  John 
does  not  share  in  the  privileges  made 
available  in  the  new  order  of  things  in- 
troduced by  Jesus'  work,  because  he 
virtually  continued  to  stand  on  the  basis 
of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  on  the  basis 
of  the  old  covenant.  And  these  priv- 
ileges to  which  John  had  no  access  cer- 
tainly consisted  not  in  the  mere  oppor- 
tunity to  witness  the  miracles  of  Jesus 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  55 

as  external  acts ;  a  participation  of  in- 
ward spiritual  blessings  must  be  referred 
to,  for  on  account  of  this  our  Lord  pro- 
nounces the  smallest  or  smaller  in  the 
kingdom  greater  than  John,  and  we  know 
from  other  sayings  that  Jesus  measured 
true  greatness  in  a  different  way  than  by 
contact  with  his  miracles. 

The  well  known  saying  from  the  Ser- 
mon on  the  Mount :  '*  Seek  ye  first  his 
kingdom  and  his  righteousness  and  all 
these  things  ( i.  e.  food  and  raiment )  shall 
be  added  unto  you,"  Matt.  vi.  33,  may 
also  be  quoted  in  this  connection.  Even 
though  the  view  that  righteousness  is 
here  present  righteousness  and  as  such 
a  closer  specification  of  the  kingdom, 
should  be  subject  to  dispute,  the  fact  re- 
mains that  the  kingdom  itself  appears  as 
a  possession  obtainable  in  this  life.  For 
food  and  clothing  are  here  represented 
as  something  to  be  added  not  to  the  seek- 
ing of  the  kingdom  but  to  the  kingdom 
itself,  and  it  goes  without  saying,  that  this 


56    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

is  applicable  only  to  the  kingdom  in  its 
present  state  of  existence. 

Most  clearly,  however,  both  the  pres- 
ent reality  and  the  internal  nature  of  the 
kingdom  are  taught  in  some  of  the  great 
parables.  Matt,  xiii,  Mk.  iv.  Lk.  viii. 
In  the  parable  of  the  wheat  and  the  tares 
the  kingdom  appears  as  a  state  of  things 
in  which  the  good  and  the  bad  still  inter- 
mingle. The  same  is  true  of  the  parable 
of  the  fish-net.  Here,  then,  obviously 
our  Lord  speaks  of  the  kingdom  in  a 
form  different  from  its  final  form,  which 
is  represented  as  beginning  with  the  sepa- 
ration between  the  two  kinds.  Now  these 
two  parables,  and  the  interpretation  of 
the  second,  especially  in  Matt.  xiii.  36-43, 
are  said  to  betray  the  influence  of  later 
conceptions.  But  what  shall  we  say  about 
the  one  of  the  mustard  seed  and  the 
leaven  ?  It  cannot  be  denied  that  Jesus 
here  conceives  of  the  kingdom  as  a  grow- 
ing organism,  a  leavening  power,  concep- 
tions which  will  scarcely  apply  to  anything 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom   57 

else  than  to  a  spiritual  order  of  things.  To 
interpret  these  as  describing  the  immense 
contrast  between  the  small  beginning  of 
things  in  Jesus'  miracles  and  the  great 
world-renewing  conclusion  of  his  work 
soon  to  be  witnessed  is,  it  seems  to  us,  a 
forced  exegesis,  which  unnecessarily 
charges  Jesus  with  an  artificial  use  of 
these  figures  so  exquisitely  chosen  and  so 
strikingly  applied  on  the  common  view. 
Finally,  it  should  be  noted  that  in  con- 
nection with  these  parables  Jesus  spoke 
significantly  of  "  the  mysteries  "  or  "  the 
mystery"  (Mk.)  of  the  kingdom  of 
heaven.  The  most  plausible  explanation 
of  this  statement  is,  that  it  refers  not  so 
much  to  the  parabolic  form  of  teaching 
as  to  the  principal  idea  embodied  in  some 
of  these  parables.  What  else  could  so 
suitably  have  been  designated  by  Jesus 
"a  mystery"  in  comparison  with  the 
Jewish  expectations  than  the  truth  that 
the  kingdom  comes  gradually,  impercep- 
tibly, spiritually  ? 


58   The  Kingdom  mtd  the  Church 

It  appears  from  the  foregoing  that  it 
is  impossible  to  deny  to  our  Lord  the  con- 
Q",  ception  of  an  internal  kingdom  which 
i^  as  such  comes  not  at  once  but  in  a 
lengthy  process.  Some  writers,  recog- 
nizing the  necessity  of  this,  are  yet  un- 
willing to  admit  that  it  was  a  conception 
held  by  Jesus  from  the  beginning  of  his 
ministry.  In  their  opinion  his  mind  un- 
derwent a  development  on  the  subject ; 
beginning  with  the  expectation  of  a 
kingdom  to  appear  suddenly  by  an  imme- 
diate act  of  God,  he  afterwards  became 
convinced  that  the  opposition  offered  to 
his  person  and  work  rendered  this  im- 
possible, that  the  kingdom  of  glory  could 
not  immediately  be  realized,  and  thus 
was  led  to  beheve,  that  only  on  its  inter- 
nal, invisible  side  the  rule  of  God  could 
even  now  be  established.  The  opposi- 
tion encountered  would  lead  to  his  death, 
but  death  would  be  a  transition  to  an 
exalted  state,  which  would  in  turn  be  fol- 
lowed by  his  coming  with  the  clouds  of 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  59 

heaven  and  the  establishment  of  the  king- 
dom in  its  full  final  form. 

A  single  glance  at  the  Gospels,  how- 
ever, will  show  how  impossible  it  is  to 
distribute  the  sayings  relating  to  the  pres- 
ent and  final  form   of    the  kingdom  in 
such  a  way  as  to  make  out  a  period  at  the 
beginning  of  which  Jesus  knew  only  the 
latter.     Some  of  the  clearest  utterances 
regarding   the    spiritual    coming  of   the 
kingdom  belong  to  a  comparatively  early 
stage  of  his  teaching,  cf.   Matt.  xi.  11 ; 
Mk.  ii.  18-22.     Nor  do  the  general  argu- 
ments adduced  in  favor  of  this  hypothesis 
have  sufficient  force  to  commend  it.     It 
is  true  Jesus  began  with  representing  the 
kingdom    as  future,  but  this  applied  at 
the  beginning  equally  to  its  spiritual,  and 
to  its  visible,  final  realization.     He  urged 
the    disciples    continually    to    seek    after 
the  kingdom,  but  this  only  implies  that 
within  them  it  has  to  come  ever  increas- 
ingly.    He  speaks  of  the  eschatological 
kingdom   as  **  the  kingdom  "  absolutely. 


6o  The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

but  this  mode  of  speech  is  not  confined 
to  the  early  period  of  his  teaching :  it 
occurs  also  later  at  a  time  when  he  is  ad- 
mitted to  have  been  familiar  with  the 
idea  of  an  immanent  kingdom.  He 
could  thus  speak  because  only  at  the  end 
of  time  will  the  kingdom  in  its  ideal  com- 
pleteness appear.  This  does  not  ex- 
clude that  he  recognized  less  complete 
embodiments  of  the  kingdom-idea  as 
present  long  before.  Again  it  is  true 
that  he  does  not  at  first  announce  himself 
as  Messiah,  and  from  this  the  inference 
might  be  drawn  that  with  his  Messiah- 
ship  he  put  also  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  into  the  future.  This  in- 
ference would  be  correct,  if  restraint  in 
the  announcement  of  himself  as  Messiah 
had  proceeded  from  the  conviction  that 
he  was  not  as  yet  the  Messiah,  nor  his 
present  work  Messianic  work  in  the  strict 
sense  of  the  term.  In  point  of  fact  Jesus 
kept  his  Messianic  claims  in  the  back- 
ground  for    pedagogical  reasons,   while 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  6i 

perfectly  conscious  that  he  was  exercis- 
ing Messianic  functions.  The  correct 
view  on  this  point  is  that  he  distinguished 
two  forms  of  Messianic  activity,  one  on 
earth  in  humility,  one  from  the  throne 
of  glory,  and  corresponding  to  this  two 
forms  of  the  kingdom, one  invisible  now, 
one  visible  at  the  end,  and,  thus  under- 
stood, the  two-sidedness  of  his  Messianic 
consciousness  affords  a  striking  parallel 
to  the  two-sidedness  of  his  kingdom-con- 
ception. On  the  whole,  therefore,  we 
have  no  reason  to  believe  that  in  our 
Lord's  subjective  apprehension  of  the 
truth  there  was  any  appreciable  progress 
on  this  important  subject  within  the  limits 
of  his  public  ministry. 

In  Jesus'  objective  teaching,  on  the 
other  hand,  as  distinguished  from  his 
subjective  consciousness,  a  certain  devel- 
opment in  the  presentation  of  truth  con- 
cerning the  kingdom  cannot  be  denied. 
We  are  able  to  affirm  this,  not  so  much 
from  a  comparison  of  the  utterances  be- 


62    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

longing  to  the  earlier  or  later  periods. 
This  would  be  difficult  since  the  material 
in  our  Gospels  is  not  all  arranged  on  the 
chronological  plan.  The  fact  appears 
rather  in  this  way,  that  at  two  points  in 
our  Lord's  ministry  a  certain  phase  of 
the  doctrine  of  the  kingdom  is  introduced 
with  such  emphasis  as  to  mark  it  rel- 
atively new.  These  two  points  are  the 
occasion  on  which  our  Lord  uttered  the 
great  kingdom-parables  and  the  an- 
nouncement of  his  passion  near  Ca^sarea 
Philippi. 

From  the  manner  in  which  the 
great  parables  draw  the  distinction  be- 
tween the  immanent  and  eschatologi- 
cal  coming  of  the  kingdom,  and  from  the 
elaborateness  with  which  Jesus  here  de- 
scribes the  gradual,  invisible  character  of 
the  former  as  resembling  the  process 
of  organic  growth,  we  are  led  to  infer 
that  previously  this  principle  had  not 
been  accentuated  in  his  teaching.  This 
does  not  mean  that  he  had   hitherto  ab- 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom   63 

stained  from  referring  to  the  spiritual  side 
of  the  subject.  We  have  seen  above  that 
the  opposite  is  true.  It  simply  means,  that 
up  to  this  point,  while  sometimes  predicat- 
ing of  the  kingdom  things  true  of  it  in  its 
purely  spiritual  stage,  sometimes  predicat- 
ing of  it  things  of  eschatological  charac- 
ter, he  did  not  on  purpose  formulate  the 
difference  and  the  relation  between  the 
two,  but  treated  the  kingdom  as  a  unit 
of  which  both  classes  of  statements  could 
be  equally  affirmed.  The  historical  ex- 
planation of  this  peculiarity  is  probably 
to  be  sought  in  our  Lord's  desire  to  keep 
in  close  touch  during  the  first  period  of 
his  ministry  with  the  Old  Testament  type 
of  teaching,  which,  as  we  have  seen,  did 
not  as  yet  distinguish  between  periods 
and  stages  in  the  realization  of  the  king- 
dom. Thus  in  condescension  to  Israel 
he  took  up  the  thread  of  revelation  where 
the  Old  Testament  had  left  it,  to  give  a 
new  and  richer  development  to  it  soon 
after  in  his  epoch-making  parabolic  de- 


64    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

liverances.  The  new  element  introduced 
at  the  second  critical  juncture,  in  the  re- 
gion of  Cssarea  Philippi,  concerns  the  re- 
lation of  the  church  to  the  kingdom  and 
will  be  discussed  afterwards  in  a  separate 
chapter. 

It  should  be  observed  that  our  Lord's 
'  teaching  relates  to  two  aspects  of  the 
same  kingdom,  not  to  two  separate  king- 
doms. The  ancient  theological  distinc- 
tion between  a  kingdom  of  grace  and  a 
kingdom  of  glory  is  infelicitous  for  this 
reason.  In  the  parable  the  growing  of 
the  grain  and  the  harvest  belong  together 
as  connected  parts  of  the  same  process. 
There  is  one  continuous  kingdom-form- 
ing movement  which  first  lays  hold  upon 
the  inward  spiritual  center  of  life  by  it- 
self, and  then  once  more  seizes  the  same 
in  connection  with  its  external  visible 
embodiment.  In  the  second  stage  the 
essence  of  the  first  is  re-included  and  re- 
mains of  supreme  importance.  The  im- 
manent kingdom  as  at  first  realized  con- 


Present  and  Future  Kingdom  65 

tinues  to  partake  of  imperfections.  Hence 
the  eschatological  crisis  will  not  merely 
supply  this  soul  of  the  kingdom  with  its 
fitting  body,  but  will  also  bring  the  ideal 
perfection  of  the  inner  spirit  itself.  Our 
Lord's  doctrine  of  the  two-sided  kingdom 
thus  understood  is  an  eloquent  witness 
to  the  unique  energy  with  which  he  sub- 
ordinated the  physical  to  the  spiritual,  as 
well  as  to  the  sobriety  with  which  he 
upheld  the  principle,  that  the  physical  is 
not  to  be  despised,  but  appreciated  in 
its  regenerated  form,  as  the  natural  and 
necessary  instrument  of  revelation  for  the 
spiritual. 


CHAPTER  V 

Current    Misconceptions  regarding 
the  Present  and  Future  Kingdom 

Y  J^AVING  found  that  both  the  im- 

I  I  manent  and  the  eschatological 
conceptions  of  the  coming  of  the 
kingdom  are  clearly  represented  in  Jesus' 
teaching  and  having  in  general  defined 
the  relation  of  the  one  to  the  other,  we 
may  now  proceed  to  look  at  each  sepa- 
rately in  order  to  guard  against  certain 
misconceptions  to  which  both  may  easily 
become  subject.  A  tendency  exists  with 
some  writers,  especially  of  the  class  who 
insist  that  Jesus  had  no  other  than  the 
66 


Current  Misconceptions       67 

eschatological  conception  of  the  king- 
dom, to  identify  the  view  ascribed  to  him 
with  the  current  Jewish  expectations. 
This  would  involve,  that  he  was  not  only 
mistaken  in  regard  to  the  time  of  the 
kingdom's  appearance,  but  also  held  an 
inherently  false  idea  regarding  its  nature, 
not  having  entirely  outgrown  the  limita- 
tions of  his  age  and  environment  on  this 
point.  It  has  in  all  seriousness  been  as- 
serted by  a  recent  writer  of  this  class,  that 
the  notion  of  the  kingdom  in  the  historic 
form  in  which  our  Lord  embraced  it,  is 
that  element  of  his  teaching  to  which  we 
cannot  ascribe  abiding  value,  that  in  the 
experience  of  Jesus  himself  it  proved  a 
delusion,  that  to  his  teaching  on  the 
fatherhood  of  God  rather  than  to  it  is 
due  the  enrichment  which  our  Lord 
wrought  in  the  religious  consciousness 
of  humanity. 

This  error  results  from  the  failure  to 
recognize  the  immanent,  spiritual  aspect 
of  the  kingdom-idea  as  actually  present 


68    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

in  Jesus'  teaching  and  the  thorough  re- 
construction which  in  result  of  it  the  idea 
as  a  whole  underwent.  It  was  little  more 
than  the  name  that  Jesus  borrowed  from 
the  kingdom-expectation  of  Judaism ; 
whatever  of  the  content  of  his  own  king- 
dom-teaching he  had  in  common  with 
the  eschatological  belief  of  his  time  be- 
longed to  the  purer  and  nobler  type  of 
Jewish  eschatology,  that  built  up  around 
the  idea  of  "the  coming  age."  And 
even  the  latter  he  lifted  to  an  infinitely 
higher  plane  by  subsuming  it  under  the 
principle  of  the  supremacy  of  God.  So 
far  as  connected  with  the  kingdom  the 
Jewish  hope  was  intensely  political  and 
national,  considerably  tainted  also  by  sen- 
suality. From  all  political  bearings  our 
Lord's  teaching  on  the  kingdom  was 
wholly  dissociated,  cf.  Mk.  xii.  13  ;  Jno. 
xviii.  36.  There  is  no  trace  in  the  Gos- 
pels of  the  so-called  chiliastic  expectation 
of  a  provisional  political  kingdom,  that 
strange   compromise   whereby   Judaism 


Current  Misconceptions        69 

endeavored  to  reconcile  the  two  hetero- 
geneous elements  that  struggled  for  the 
supremacy  in  its  eschatological  conscious- 
ness. What  formally  corresponds  in  our 
Lord's  teaching  to  this  notion  is  the  idea 
of  the  invisible,  spiritual  kingdom,  and 
how  totally  different  it  is  ! 

Equally  broad  and  free  is  Jesus'  king^ 
dom-doctrine  in  its  attitude  towards  the 
problem  of  Israel's  national  prerogative. 
Sayings  like  Matt.  viii.  11  ;  xxi.  43  ;  xxviii. 
19  ;  Mk.  xiii.  10  ;  xiv.  9  ;  Lk.  iv.  26,  27, 
prove  that  he  distinctly  anticipated  the 
rejection  of  many  in  Israel  and  the  ex- 
tension of  the  gospel  to  the  Gentiles  on 
a  large  scale.  It  is  true  these  are  all 
prophetic  words.  In  his  own  pastoral 
activity  he  confined  himself  deliberately 
to  the  lost  sheep  of  the  house  of  Israel 
and  kept  his  helpers  within  the  same 
limits.  But  even  so  there  is  in  his  whole 
attitude  as  a  teacher  of  Israel  that  which 
has  been  strikingly  characterized  as  **  in- 
tensive universalism."     In  the  Jew  it  is 


yo   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

the  man  he  seeks  and  endeavors  to  save. 
The  problems  raised,  the  duties  required, 
the  blessings  conferred  are  such  as  to  be 
applicable    to  all  without   distinction  of 

I  race,  caste,  or  sex. 

I—  Lk.  xxii.  30  is  sometimes  quoted  to 
prove  that  Jesus  had  not  freed  himself 
from  the  Jewish  particularism.  Though 
possibly  the  **  judging  "  may  have  to  be 
understood  in  the  sense  of  **  reigning," 
yet  the  words  by  no  means  imply  the 
salvation  of  all  Israel,  nor  do  they  exclude 
the  calling  of  the  Gentiles.  They  were 
spoken  at  a  time  when  Jesus  could  no 
longer  doubt  that  the  masses  of  Israel 
would  reject  him.  Besides  the  words  are 
figurative,  to  judge  from  the  context  with 
its  reference  to  "  eating  "  and  **  drinking." 
All  we  can  legitimately  infer  from  them 
is  that  the  apostles  will  have  a  position 
of  preeminence  in  the  kingdom. 

The  third  feature  in  which  our  Lord's 
kingdom-message  differs  from  the  Jew- 
ish expectation  consists  in  the  absence  of 


Currejit  Misconceptions        ']i 

the  sensualistic  element  so  prominent  in 
the  latter.  True  he  speaks  in  connection 
with  the  kingdom  of  eating,  drinking, 
reclining  at  table,  inheriting  the  earth, 
etc.,  and  it  is  said  we  have  no  right  to 
spiritualize  all  this.  But  the  Old  Testa- 
ment already  used  such  forms  of  speech 
with  the  clear  consciousness  of  their 
metaphorical  character.  Even  in  the 
apocalyptic  literature  this  sense  is  not  en- 
tirely wanting,  as  the  statement  of  Enoch 
XV.  11,  **They  will  not  partake  of  any 
food,  nor  will  they  thirst,"  shows.  With 
reference  to  one  point  at  least,  Jesus  pos- 
itively affirmed  that  the  sensual  enjoy- 
ments of  the  present  life  will  cease  in 
the  world  to  come,  Mk.  xii.  25.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  must  remember  that  it 
is  possible  to  go  too  far  in  the  spiritualiz- 
ing interpretation  of  this  class  of  utter- 
ances. We  may  not  dissolve  everything 
into  purely  inward  processes  and  mental 
states,  as  modern  theologians  do  when 
they  say  that  heaven  and  hell  are  in  the 


72   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

hearts  of  men.  The  eschatological  king- 
dom has  certainly  in  our  Lord's  concep- 
tion its  own  outward  forms  of  life.  These 
figures  stand  for  objective,  external  real- 
ities in  which  the  body  will  have  its  own 
part  and  function.  When  our  Lord 
speaks  of  earthly  enjoyments,  he  means 
something  that  will  be  truly  analogous  to 
these  and  yet  move  on  an  altogether 
higher  plane.  Our  difficulty  lies  in  this, 
that  we  cannot  frame  a  concrete  con- 
ception of  outward  forms  of  life  without 
having  recourse  to  the  senses.  But  our 
difficulty  does  not  prove  the  impossibility, 
nor  does  it  prove  that  the  same  difficulty 
existed  for  Jesus,  who  was  familiar  with 
the  heavenly  world  by  experience, 
r  We  believe,  however,  that  there  is 
greater  need  at  the  present  day  to  guard 
against  a  misunderstanding  of  the  other 
side  of  our  Lord's  kingdom-teaching, 
that  which  relates  to  the  spiritual,  in- 
visible form  of  the  kingdom.  Modern 
writers  do    not   always   sufficiently  em- 


Current  Misconceptions       73 

phasize  that,  notwithstanding  its  internal 
character,  the  kingdom  remains  to  all 
intents  a  supernatural  kingdom.  It  is 
easy  to  speak  disparagingly  of  the  gross 
realistic  expectations  of  the  Jews,  but 
those  who  do  so  often  attack  under  the 
pretense  of  a  refined  spiritualism  the  very 
essence  of  Biblical  supernaturalism.  After 
all  deductions  are  made,  it  must  be  main- 
tained that  the  Jews  could  not  have  cher- 
ished this  vigorous  realism,  had  they  not 
been  supernaturalists  at  heart,  trained  in 
that  great  school  of  supernaturalism,  the, 
Old  Testament.  In  this  matter  Jesus 
was  in  full  agreement  with  their  posi- 
tion. 

The  circumstance  that  some  of  the 
parables  which  deal  with  this  aspect  of 
the  kingdom  have  been  taken  from  the 
sphere  of  organic  life  has  sometimes  led 
to  misconceptions  here.  The  point  of 
comparison  in  these  parables  is  not  the 
naturalness  of  the  process  but  only  its 
gradualness  and  invisible  character.     In 


74    The  Kmgdotn  and  the  Church 

the  parable  of  the  imperceptibly  grow- 
ing seed,  Mk.  iv.  26-29,  rather  the 
opposite  is  implied,  viz.,  that  God  gives 
the  increase  without  human  intervention. 
Jesus  performs  all  his  work,  even  that 
pertaining  to  the  immanent  kingdom,  in 
the  Spirit,  and  the  Spirit  stands  for  the 
supernatural.  That  we  must  not  identify 
the  processes  whereby  this  side  of  the 
kingdom  is  realized  with  purely  natural 
processes  can  be  best  seen  from  the 
Fourth  Gospel.  Here  the  present  hfe  is 
equivalent  to  the  immanent  kingdom. 
But  this  present  life  appears  to  be 
thoroughly  supernatural  in  its  origin  and 
character.  Regeneration  introduces  into 
it. 

At  a  subsequent  point  of  our  enquiry, 
when  discussing  the  relation  of  the 
church  to  the  kingdom,  it  will  appear 
still  more  clearly,  that  by  its  translation 
into  the  sphere  of  the  internal  and  in- 
visible the  kingdom-idea  has  lost  noth- 
ing of  the   supernaturalistic  associations 


Current  Misconceptions       75 

which  belonged  to  it  from  its  very  or- 
igin. The  difference  between  the  two 
stages  of  its  coming  does  not  lie  in 
that  the  one  is  brought  about  by  forces 
already  present  in  the  human  world, 
whereas  the  other  has  to  be  accom- 
plished by  the  introduction  of  new 
miraculous  forces  from  above.  It  is  a 
difference  merely  in  the  mode  of  opera- 
tion and  revelation  of  the  supernatural 
common  to  both  stages.  The  same 
omnipotent  power  at  work  through  the 
ages  will  also  effect  the  consummation 
at  the  end.  But  it  will  assume  a  new 
form  when  the  end  has  come,  so  as  to 
work  instantaneously,  and  will  draw 
within  the  sphere  of  its  operation  the  en- 
tire physical  universe.  It  would  not  be  in 
harmony  with  Jesus'  view  so  to  conceive 
of  it,  as  if  by  the  gradual  extension  of 
the  divine  power  operating  internally,  by 
the  growth  of  the  church,  by  the  ever- 
widening  influence  of  the  truth,  the  king- 
dom which  now  is  will  become  all-com- 


76    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

prehensive  and  universal  and  so  of  itself 
pass  over  into  the  final  kingdom.  This 
would  eliminate  all  true  eschatology  and 
obliterate  the  distinction  between  the  two 
aspects  of  Jesus'  teaching  on  the  subject. 
The  parables  of  the  wheat  and  the 
tares  and  of  the  fish-net,  while  on  the 
one  hand  they  do  imply,  as  we  have  seen, 
the  higher  unity  of  the  entire  movement, 
also  imply  on  the  other  hand  that  its 
consummation  does  not  spontaneously 
result  from  the  preceding  process,  super- 
natural though  this  be.  The  harvest  is 
conditioned  by  the  ripeness  of  the  grain, 
and  yet  the  ripeness  of  the  grain  can 
never  of  itself  set  in  operation  the 
harvest.  The  harvest  comes  when  the 
man  puts  forth  the  sickle,  because  the 
fruit  is  ripe.  So  when  the  immanent 
kingdom  has  run  its  course  to  maturity, 
God  will  intervene  in  the  miracle  of  all 
miracles.  It  would  also  plainly  be  im- 
possible for  the  final  kingdom  to  come 
in   any  other  way  than   this.     For  this 


Current  Misconceptions        77 

final  state  of  the  kingdom  presupposes 
great  physical,  cosmical  changes,  which 
no  force  working  in  the  spiritual  sphere 
can  produce.  It  would  be  difficult  to 
overestimate  the  vividness  with  which 
our  Lord  realized  and  the  emphasis  with 
which  he  describes  the  new  and  mar- 
velous conditions  under  which  the  life 
of  the  blessed  in  the  future  kingdom 
will  be  lived.  It  is  an  order  of  things 
lying  altogether  above  this  earthly  life, 
in  which  the  righteous  shall  shine  as  the 
sun,  in  which  all  the  prophets  will  be 
seen,  in  which  the  pure  in  heart  shall 
enjoy  the  beatific  vision  of  God,  in  which 
those  who  hunger  and  thirst  after  right- 
eousness shall  be  completely  filled. 
Surely  to  effect  this  there  must  take  place 
a  great  crisis,  a  great  catastrophe  at  the 
end  which  will  be  the  very  opposite  of 
all  evolution.  Our  Lord  himself  has 
marked  its  unique  character  by  calling  it 
the  palingenesis,  the  regeneration.  Matt. 
xix.  28. 


% 


jS    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Still  further  we  must  guard  against  con- 
fining the  internal,  spiritual  kingdom  to 
the  sphere  of  the  ethical.  This  is  an  er- 
ror which  has  had  considerable  vogue  in 
recent  times,  owing  to  the  fact  that  cer- 
tain systems  of  theology  constructed  from 
a  one-sided  ethical  point  of  view  have 
adopted  the  kingdom-idea  as  their  or- 
ganizing center.  The  kingdom  has  been 
defined  as  an  ethical  community  realized 
by  the  interaction  of  men  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  love.  This  is  erroneous  in  two 
respects.  In  the  first  place,  according  to 
our  Lord  the  whole  content  of  religion 
is  to  be  subsumed  under  the  kingdom. 
While  it  is  true  that  the  kingdom  con- 
sists in  righteousness,  it  is  by  no  means 
coextensive  with  the  same,  but  consists 
in  many  other  things  besides.  Such 
blessings  as  life,  forgiveness  of  sin,  com- 
munion with  God,  belong  to  it  just  as 
much  and  have  just  as  vital  a  connection 
with  the  kingdom-idea,  as  the  cultivation 
of  love,  as  will  subsequently  appear.  And 


Current  Misconceptions        79 

secondly,  all  that  belongs  to  the  kingdom, 
the  ethical  and  religious  alike,  is  repre- 
sented in  Jesus'  kingdom-teaching,  not 
as  the  product  of  human  activity,  but  as 
the  work  of  God.  He  nowhere  says 
that  men  make  the  kingdom.  In  our 
Lord's  Prayer  the  words  :  **  Thy  will  be 
done  "  explain  the  preceding  words 
*'Thy  Kingdom  come,"  but  both  are 
petitions,  in  uttering  which  we  are  taught 
to  look  to  God  that  he  may  set  up  in  us 
his  reign  even  in  that  form  which  will  be 
revealed  through  our  actions. 


CHAPTER  VI 

The  Essence  of  the  Kingdom :  The 
Kingdom  as  the  Supremacy 
of  God  in  the  Sphere  of  Saving 
Power 

/T  has  been  shown  in  the  foregoing 
how  our   Lord   designates  the  new 
order  of  things  he  came  to  introduce 
*'the  kingdom  of   God,"  and  that  not 
merely  in  its  final  outcome  but  in  its  en- 
tire course  of  development.     The  ques- 
ftion  must  next  be  raised.   Why  did  he 
adopt  this  name,  what  is  the  appropriate- 
ness of  the  designation  to  his  own  mind  ? 
It  certainly  would  be  wrong  to  assume 
80 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  8i 

that  he  used  it  from  mere  accommoda- 
tion to  a  popular  parlance,  that  it  was  in 
no  wise  suggestive  to  him  of  important 
principles  and  ideas.  This  is  excluded 
by  the  fact  pointed  out  above,  that  it  was 
not  by  any  means  the  most  familiar  of 
the  names  current  among  the  Jews  for 
the  Messianic  age.  If  Jesus  nevertheless 
favored  it  above  all  others,  he  must  have 
had  a  positive  reason  for  this.  Nor  can 
we  explain  his  choice  from  mere  depend- 
ence on  the  Old  Testament.  Jesus'  de- 
pendence on  the  Old  Testament  was 
never  a  mere  matter  of  form.  He  always 
sought  in  the  form  the  substance,  in  the 
terms  appropriated  the  great  ideal  prin- 
ciples they  were  intended  to  express. 
We  must  therefore  look  for  these.  In] 
looking  for  them  we  must  not  expect  to 
find  anywhere  in  his  teaching  a  definition 
of  the  kingdom.  Jesus'  method  of  teach- 
ing was  not  the  philosophical  one  of  de- 
fining a  thing,  but  the  popular,  parabolic 
one    of    describing    and    illustrating    it. 

F 


82    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Paul,  though  speaking  much  less  of  the 
kingdom,  has  come  much  nearer  to  de- 
fining it  than  our  Lord,  cf .  Rom.  xiv.  17. 
The  absence  of  definition,  however,  does 
not  involve  a  lack  of  order  or  correlation 
in  the  aspects  and  features  described.  In 
the  great  variety  of  statements  made  con- 
cerning the  kingdom  the  careful  observer 
will  not  fail  to  discover  certain  general 
lines  along  which  the  description  or  com- 
parison moves,  certain  outstanding  prin- 
ciples to  whose  elucidation  it  constantly 
returns.  If  we  can  ascertain  these,  we 
shall  also  have  found  the  key  to  our  Lord's 
own  view  about  the  deeper  meaning  of 
the  name  "kingdom  of  God." 
r  At  the  outset  we  must  reject  as  inade- 
quate the  favorite  modern  explanation 
that  in  the  figure  of  the  kingdom  the 
point  of  comparison  lies  primarily  in  the 
mutual  association  of  men  so  as  to  form 
a  moral  or  religious  organism.  The  king- 
dom is  indeed  a  community  in  which 
men  are  knit  together  by  the  closest  of 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  '^'^y 

bonds,  and  especially  in  connection  with 
our  Lord's  teaching  on  the  church  this 
is  brought  out.  Taking,  however,  the 
kingdom-teaching  as  a  whole  this  point 
is  but  little  emphasized,  Matt.  xiii.  24-30, 
47-50.  Besides,  this  conception  is  not 
nearly  wide  enough  to  cover  all  the  things 
predicated  of  the  kingdom  in  the  Gos- 
pels, according  to  which  it  appears  to  con- 
sist as  much  in  gifts  and  powers  from 
above  as  in  inter-human  relations  and  ac- 
tivities. Its  resemblance  to  a  community 
offers  at  least  only  a  partial  explanation  of 
its  kingdom-character,  and  so  far  as  this 
explanation  is  correct  it  is  not  ultimate, 
because  not  the  union  of  men  as  such, 
but  that  in  God  which  produces  and 
underlies  it,  is  the  true  kingdom-forming 
principle.  J 

The  main  reason  for  the  use  of  the 
name  by  Jesus  lies  undoubtedly  in  this, 
that  in  the  new  order  of  things  God  is  in 
some  such  sense  the  supreme  and  con- 
trolling factor  as  the  ruler  in  a  human 


84    The  Kingdom  mid  the  Church 

kingdom.  The  conception  is  a  God- 
centered  conception  to  the  very  core.  In 
order  to  appreciate  its  significance,  we 
must  endeavor  to  do  w^hat  Jesus  did,  look 
at  the  whole  of  the  world  and  of  life  from 
the  point  of  view  of  their  subserviency 
to  the  glory  of  God.  The  difficulty  for 
us  in  achieving  this  lies  not  merely  in  that 
we  are  apt  to  take  a  lower  man-centered 
view  of  religion,  but  equally  much  in  that 
by  our  modern  idea  of  the  state  we  are 
not  naturally  led  to  associate  such  an  order 
of  things  with  the  name  of  a  kingdom. 
According  to  our  modern  conception, 
especially  in  its  republican  form,  the  in- 
stitution of  the  state  with  its  magistrate 
exists  for  the  sake  of  the  subjects,  even 
the  king,  at  least  in  a  constitutional  mon- 
archy, may  be  considered  as  a  means  to 
an  end.  In  the  ancient  state  this  is  dif- 
ferent. Here  the  individual  exists  for 
the  state,  and  in  the  Oriental  monarchy 
the  state  is  centralized  and  summed  up 
in  the  person  of  the  ruler. 


TJie  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  85 

Now  whatever  may  be  the  merits  or  de- 
merits of  such  a  principle  as  the  construc- 
tive  principle    for    our   human   political 
life,  it  affords  obviously  the  only  point  of 
view  from  which  we  can  properly  con- 
strue the  fundamental  relation   between 
God  and  man.     It  was  on  the  basis  of 
such  a  conception  of  kingship,  that  from 
early  times  the  relation  of  God  to  Israel 
had  been  expressed  in  the  form  of  a  royal 
rule.     The  primary  purpose  of   Israel's) 
theocratic  constitution   was  not  to  teach 
the  world  the  principles  of  civil  govern- 
ment, though  undoubtedly  in  this  respect 
also  valuable  lessons  can  be  learned  from 
it,  but  to  reflect  the  eternal  laws  of  re- 
ligious intercourse  between  God  and  man 
as  they  will  exist  in  the  consummate  life 
at  the  end.     Judaism  had  lost  the  sense 
for  this,  had  shifted  the  center  of  gravity 
from  God  to  man  ;  in  Jesus'  teaching  the 
proper  relation  was  restored.     To  him 
the   kingdom   exists    there,    where   not 
merely  God  is  supreme,  for  that  is  true 


86    The  Kmgdo7n  and  the  Church 

at  all  times  and  under  all  circumstances, 
but  where  God  supernaturally  carries 
through  his  supremacy  against  all  oppos- 
ing powers  and  brings  man  to  the  willing 
recognition  of  the  same.  It  is  a  state  of 
things  in  which  everything  converges 
and  tends  towards  God  as  the  highest 

^good. 

The    closing    words   of    the    Lord's 

'  Prayer,  according  to  the  version  in 
Matthew,  are  the  purest  expression  of 
this  kingdom-consciousness  which  Jesus 
desired  to  cultivate  in  the  minds  of  his 
disciples :  '  *  Thine  is  the  kingdom,  and  the 
power,  and  the  glory,  for  ever."  Even 
if  these  words  should  not  be  authentic, 
since  they  are  wanting  in  the  text  of  Luke, 
and  in  the  text  of  Matthew  in  some  im- 
portant authorities,  whence  the  Revised 
Version  places  them  in  the  margin,  still 
they  retain  their  weight  as  a  very  ancient 
witness  to  the  conception  of  the  kingdom 
in  the  early  church.  It  will  be  observed 
that  Paul  in  1  Cor.  xv,  where  he   speaks 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  87 

of  the  delivering  up  of  the  kingdom  by 
Christ  to  the  Father,  describes  the  con- 
tent of  the  final  kingdom  of  God  in  pre- 
cisely the  same  way  as  consisting  in  this 
that  ^^  God  will  be  all  in  all,''  vs.  28,  cf. 
also  Rev.  xi.  15.  Because  the  kingdom 
is  thus  centered  in  God  himself,  it  can  be 
represented  by  our  Lord  as  the  supreme 
object  of  human  pursuit  This  would 
plainly  be  impossible  if  the  idea  of  the 
kingdom  was  conceived  on  any  lower 
plane,  for  in  that  case  some  other  object 
would  be  interposed  between  God  and 
man  as  the  absolute  end  of  man's  reli- 
gious aspiration.  Because  the  kingdom 
of  God  means  the  ideal  of  religion  in 
this  highest  sense  realized,  Jesus  de- 
clared the  scribe  to  be  not  far  from  the 
kingdom,  because  the  latter  recognized 
the  commandment  to  love  God  with  all 
the  heart,  all  the  soul,  all  the  strength, 
and  all  the  mind  as  the  supreme  com- 
mandment, Mk.  xiv.  34.  In  Matt.  vi. 
33  the  seeking  after  the  kingdom  is  op- 


SS    The  Kingdom  and  the  CJntrch 

posed  to  the  seeking  after  earthly  things, 
because  it  is  at  the  bottom  the  seeking 
after  God  himself.  And  the  same  God- 
centered  view,  which  thus  finds  expres- 
sion in  the  thought  of  the  kingdom,  is 
also  the  highest  aspect  under  which  Jesus 
views  his  entire  work  in  the  discourses 
of  the  Fourth  Gospel.  Here  Christ  at 
the  close  of  his  ministry  speaks  to  the 
Father:  **  I  glorified  thee  on  the  earth, 
having  accomplished  the  work  which 
thou  hast  given  me  to  do,"  xvii.  4.  We 
find,  therefore,  that  though  the  name 
kingdom  is  absent,  the  main  idea  em- 
bodied in  it  is  found  in  John  as  well  as 
in  the  Synoptists.  The  principle  thus 
disclosed  is  of  the  greatest  conceivable 
practical  significance.  It  teaches  that 
in  the  very  order  of  things  provided  for 
the  salvation  of  mankind,  everything  is 
in  its  ultimate  analysis  designed  to  glorify 
God.  The  kingdom  is  a  conception 
which  must  of  necessity  remain  unintel- 
ligible and  unacceptable  to  every  view  of 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  89 

the  world  and  of  religion  which  magni- 
fies man  at  the  expense  of  God.  J 
The  supremacy  of  God  in  the  king"^ 
dom  reveals  itself  in  various  ways.  It 
comes  to  light  in  the  acts  by  which  the 
kingdom  is  established,  in  the  moral 
order  under  which  it  exists,  in  the  spirit- 
ual blessings,  privileges  and  delights  that 
are  enjoyed  in  it.  The  first  constitute 
the  kingdom  a  sphere  of  divine  power, 
the  second  a  sphere  of  divine  righteous- 
ness, the  third  a  sphere  of  divinely  be- 
stowed blessedness.  These  rubrics  are 
not,  of  course,  so  many  sections  into 
which  the  content  of  the  kingdom  can 
be  divided,  but  rather  so  many  aspects 
under  which  it  may  be  considered. 
What  is  kingdom-power  from  one  point 
of  view  is  kingdom-righteousness  from 
another  and  kingdom-blessedness  from 
still  a  third.  The  exercise  of  powder  is 
needed  to  render  possible  the  realization 
of  righteousness,  the  realization  of  right- 
eousness to  render  possible  the  bestowal 


90    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

of  blessedness.  Remembering  the  de- 
scriptive character  and  the  practical  pur- 
pose of  our  Lord's  teaching  we  should 
not  endeavor  to  draw  any  hard  and  fast 
lines,  but  make  allowance  for  the  easy 
passing  over  of  one  aspect  into  the  other. 
The  element  of  power  is  one  of  the 
earliest  and  most  constant  elements  in 
the  Biblical  disclosure  of  the  divine  king- 
ship. The  Song  of  Moses  celebrates 
Jehovah  as  King  because  he  has  glori- 
ously overcome  his  enemies,  Ex.  xv. 
And  from  these  ancient  times  onward 
the  note  of  conquest  is  never  absent  from 
the  Old  Testament  utterances  regarding 
the  kingdom.  Especially  in  Daniel  the 
kingdom  is  presented  from  this  side, 
when  it  appears  as  a  stone  breaking  to 
pieces  the  image  of  the  world-kingdoms 
ii.  45.  How  familiar  this  idea  was  to 
the  Apostle  Paul  we  may  gather  from 
his  words  in  1  Cor.  xv.  25,  "'  For  he 
(Christ)  must  reign,  till  he  (God)  hath 
put   all   his    enemies    under    his    feet." 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  91 

Here  the  kingship  of  Christ  is  equivalent 
to  the  process  of  subjecting  one  enemy 
after  another.  After  the  last  enemy, 
death,  has  been  conquered,  there  is  no 
further  need  for  the  kingdom  of  Christ : 
hence  it  is  delivered  up  to  God  the 
Father.  Christ's  kingdom  as  a  process  of 
conquest  precedes  the  final  kingdom  of 
God  as  a  settled  permanent  state. 

To  the  Jewish  conception  of  the  coming 
kingdom  also  this  feature  was  essential. 
What  our  Lord  did  was  to  give  to  this 
Jewish  mode  of  representation  an  in- 
finitely higher  content,  while  formally 
retaining  it.  He  lifted  it  out  of  the  po- 
litical sphere  into  the  spiritual.  The  con- 
quests to  which  he  refers  are  those  over 
Satan  and  the  demons,  over  sin  and  evil. 
It  is  kingdom  against  kingdom,  but  both 
of  these  opposing  kingdoms  belong  to  a 
higher  world  than  that  to  which  Rome 
and  her  empire  belong.  In  the  words, 
"  If  I  by  the  Spirit  of  God  cast  out  de- 
mons, then  the   kingdom   of    God  has 


92    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

come  upon  you,"  already  commented 
upon  in  another  connection,  our  Lord 
refers  to  the  forth-putting  of  this  divine 
conquering  power  as  a  sure  sign  of  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom. 

But  we  must  broaden  this  idea  :  not 
merely  the  casting  out  of  demons,  all 
the  miracles  of  Jesus  find  their  interpre- 
tation at  least  in  part  from  this,  that  they 
are  manifestations  of  the  kingdom-power. 
It  is  a  mistake  to  think  that  Jesus  looked 
upon  them  exclusively  as  signs  authen- 
ticating his  mission.  Undoubtedly  this 
was  one  of  the  purposes  for  which  the 
miracles  were  intended,  and  it  is  brought 
out  prominently  in  the  Fourth  Gospel. 
But  in  the  Synoptists,  where  the  teach- 
ing of  Jesus  is  centered  in  the  kingdom- 
idea,  the  miracles  do  not  appear  primarily 
in  this  light.  Here  they  are  signs  in  a 
different  sense,  viz.,  signs  of  the  actual 
arrival  of  the  kingdom,  because  they 
show  that  the  royal  power  of  God  is  al- 
ready in  motion.     He  rebukes  the  people 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Powey  93 

because  they  can  interpret  the  signs  of 
the  weather,  but  cannot  interpret  the 
signs  of  the  times.  These  signs  of  the 
times  are  nothing  else  than  the  miracu- 
lous works  which  prove  the  kingdom  to  ! 
be  there.  The  forces  which  will  rev- 
olutionize heaven  and  earth  are  already 
at  work. 

On  the  same  principle  Jesus  answered  I 
the  inquiry  of  John  the  Baptist,  as  to 
whether  he  were  the  one  that  was  to 
come,  or  they  should  expect  another, 
with  a  reference  to  his  Messianic  works  : 
"  The  blind  receive  their  sight,  and  the 
lame  walk,  the  lepers  are  cleansed,  and 
the  deaf  hear,  and  the  dead  are  raised  up, 
and  the  poor  have  good  tidings  preached 
unto  them,"  Matt.  xi.  5.  The  Messianic 
works  are  the  works  which  inaugurate 
the  kingdom.  Still  more  clearly  this 
appears  from  the  discourse  in  the  syna- 
gogue at  Nazareth  recorded  by  Luke, 
which  had  for  its  text  the  prophecy  of 
Isaiah  :  **  The  Spirit  of  the  Lord  is  upon 


94    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

me,  because  he  anointed  me  to  preach 
good  tidings  to  the  poor:  he  hath  sent 
me  to  proclaim  release  to  the  captives, 
and  recovering  of  sight  to  the  blind,  to 
set  at  liberty  them  that  are  bruised,  to 
proclaim  the  acceptable  year  of  the 
Lord,"  Lk.  iv.  18,  19.  Here  the  accept- 
able year  of  Jehovah,  the  year  of  jubilee, 
in  v^hich  all  things  return  to  their  normal, 
wholesome  condition,  is  none  other  than 
the  era  of  the  kingdom,  and  by  the  be- 
stowal of  the  blessings  enumerated  it 
comes. 

It  will  be  observed  that  the  miracles 
which  Jesus  wrought  were  with  one  ex- 
ception beneficent  miracles.  To  give  a 
sign  from  heaven,  a  sign  not  possessing 
this  beneficent  character,  he  persistently 
refused.  The  true  signs  had  to  be  king- 
dom-signs, exhibitions  of  God's  royal 
power.  This  power,  therefore,  has  two 
sides :  so  far  as  the  enemies  of  God  are 
concerned,  it  is  a  conquering,  destructive, 
judging   power ;    so  far   as   man  is  con- 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  95 

cerned,  it  is  a  liberating,  healing,  saving 
power.  In  the  casting  out  of  demons 
both  sides  are  revealed.  In  the  other  mir- 
acles it  is  chiefly  the  beneficent  side  which 
finds  expression.  Jesus  brings  release  to 
the  captives  and  sets  at  liberty  those  that 
are  bruised,  for  the  satanic  power  not 
only  renders  man  miserable  but  also  re- 
duces him  to  bondage,  as  is  even  exter- 
nally indicated  by  the  fact  that  the  de- 
mons control  the  physical  organism  of 
those  possessed. 

The  question  naturally  arises,  how  can 
this  identification  of  the  kingdom  with 
the  efl?ects  of  a  power  working  largely 
in  the  physical  sphere  be  reconciled  with 
the  emphasis  placed  by  Jesus  upon  the 
spiritual  nature  of  the  kingdom.  The 
answer  is  that  the  physical  evils  which 
the  kingdom-power  removes  have  a 
moral  and  spiritual  background.  Satan 
reigns  not  merely  in  the  body,  nor  merely 
in  the  mind  pathologically  considered, 
but  also  in  the  heart  and  will  of  man  as 


96    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

the  instigator  of  sin  and  the  source  of 
moral  evil.  Hence  Jesus  made  his  mir- 
acles the  occasion  for  suggesting  and 
working  the  profounder  change  by  which 
the  bonds  of  sin  were  loosed  and  the 
rule  of  God  set  up  anew  in  the  entire  in- 
ner life  of  men.  Because  this  real  con- 
nection exists,  the  physical  process  can 
become  symbolical  of  the  spiritual.  In 
the  Synoptical  Gospels,  it  is  true,  this  is 
nowhere  directly  stated,  although  the 
external  and  the  internal  are  sometimes 
significantly  placed  side  by  side  as  coordi- 
nated parts  of  one  identical  work,  Mk. 
ii.  9.  In  the  Fourth  Gospel,  however, 
Jesus  gives  clearly  to  understand  that  the 
physical  acts  are  intended  to  point  to  cor- 
responding spiritual  acts.  The  healing 
of  the  blind,  the  raising  of  the  dead  find 
their  counterpart  in  what  he  does  for  the 
souls  of  sinners. 

On  the  other  hand,  it  should  not  be 
overlooked  that  these  physical  signs  have 
also  a  connection  with  the  kingdom  in  the 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  97 

external  sphere  itself.     The  miraculous 
power  is  prophetic  of  that  great  kingdom- 
power  which  will  be  exerted  at  the  end. 
It  is  especially  in  eschatological  connec- 
tions that  a  revelation  of  power  is  referred 
to,  Matt.  xxiv.  30;  Mk.  xii.  24.     All  the 
supernatural   phenomena  that  accompa- 
nied not  merely  the  ministry  of  Jesus,  but 
characterized  also  the  history  of  the  apos- 
tolic church,  must  be  interpreted  in  this 
light.     It  had  to  be  shown  immediately, 
that  the  work  inaugurated  by  Jesus  airri«| 
at  nothing   less  than  a   supernatural  reA 
newal  of  the  world,  whereby  all  evil  will\ 
be  overcome,  a  renewal  of  the   physical! 
as  well  of  the  spiritual  world,  Matt.  xix.  \ 
28.      Because    the  Old  Testament   had 
treated  these  two  as  belonging  inseparably 
together,  and  because  in  reality  it  would 
now  appear  that  the  two  lay  far  apart  in 
point  of  time,  it  was  all  the  more  neces- 
sary that  some  solid  anticipations  of  the 
eschatological  change   should   be   given. 
Verbal  prophecy  was  not   sufficient :    a 


98    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

prophecy  in  acts  was  required,  and  this 
the  miracles  furnished.  In  so  far  there  is 
an  element  of  truth  in  the  modern  view 
which  represents  Jesus  as  looking  upon 
the  miracles  as  the  beginning  of  the  final 
arrival  of  the  kingdom.  Here,  as  on 
other  points,  our  Lord's  teaching  warns 
us  against  that  excessive  spiritualizing 
tendency,  to  which  the  external  world 
becomes  altogether  worthless  and  indif- 
ferent or  even  withdrawn  from  the  direct 
control  of  God. 

The  source  of  this  kingdom-power  is 
according  to  our  Lord's  teaching  the 
Spirit.  In  the  saying  Matt.  xii.  28  the 
point  evidently  is,  that  where  the  Spirit  of 
God  operates,  there  the  kingdom  of  God 
comes.  To  his  being  anointed  with  the 
Spirit  Jesus  ascribes  all  his  power  to  do 
miracles,  Lk.  iv.  18.  To  accuse  him  of 
casting  out  demons  in  league  with  Beel- 
zebub is  to  blaspheme  the  Spirit,  cf.  for 
the  interchangeableness  of  the  concep- 
tions of  "Spirit"  and  ** power,"  such  pas- 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power   99 

sages  as  Lk.  i.  17,  35;  xxiv.  19,  49;  Acts 
i.  8 ;  X.  38.  Indeed  our  Lord's  references 
to  the  Spirit  as  the  author  of  saving  acts 
are  almost  entirely  connected  with  his 
miracles.  Still  it  would  be  inaccurate,  as 
is  sometimes  done,  to  deny  to  Jesus  the 
idea,  so  beautifully  worked  out  by  Paul, 
that  the  Spirit  is  the  source  of  the  moral 
and  religious  renewal  of  man,  the  author 
and  bearer  of  the  entire  Christian  life 
with  all  its  graces  and  virtues.  In  the 
Fourth  Gospel  the  presence  of  this  idea 
is  acknowledged  by  all.  Here  our  Lord 
teaches  that  man  must  be  born  of  water 
and  the  Spirit  in  order  to  see  and  to  enter 
the  kingdom  of  God.  In  the  closing 
discourses  of  this  Gospel  the  work  of  the 
Spirit  as  guiding  all  the  disciples  into  the 
knowledge  of  the  truth  is  made  very 
prominent,  and  the  knowledge  of  the 
truth  in  our  Lord's  Johannine  teaching 
distinctly  includes  its  moral  and  spiritual 
saving  apprehension  and  appropriation  by 
the  disciples,  so   that  the  Spirit  is  here 


loo   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

brought  into  direct  connection  with  the 
ethical  and  religious  life  of  man. 

Even  from  the  Synoptical  sayings  the 
same  idea  is  not  entirely  absent.  Though 
the  Spirit  may  work  in  the  sphere  of  the 
miracles,  yet  these  miracles  are  wrought 
for  the  moral  purpose  of  overthrowing 
the  kingdom  of  evil.  The  Spirit  leads 
Jesus  into  the  wilderness  to  be  tempted 
of  Satan  and  thus  appears  as  pursuing  the 
end  of  the  Messiah's  moral  victory  over 
the  Prince  of  Evil.  Satan  exerts  an  evil 
influence  over  man  in  the  moral  and  re- 
ligious sphere,  consequently  on  the  prin- 
ciple of  opposition  the  Spirit  of  God  must 
have  been  believed  to  exert  a  good  in- 
fluence. Probably  also  the  saying  of 
Jesus,  that  the  heavenly  Father  out  of 
his  goodness  is  ready  to  give  the  Spirit 
to  his  children,  Lk.  xi.  13,  does  not  have 
exclusive  reference  to  the  Spirit  as  the 
source  of  miracles.  Thus  we  see  that 
the  first  outlines  of  the  doctrine  of  the 
Spirit,  as  afterwards  developed  in  apostolic 


The  Sphere  of  Saving  Power  loi 

revelation,  are  already  drawn  by  Jesus. 
The  full  disclosure  of  this  doctrine  could 
not  be  expected  then,  because  the  full 
bestowal  of  the  Spirit  could  not  come  until 
after  the  Saviour's  death,  Jno.  vii.  39. 
But  in  his  Messianic  works  Jesus  exhib- 
ited in  a  revelation  of  facts  the  funda- 
mental part  taken  by  the  Spirit  in  the  sal- 
vation of  man.  Thus  Jesus  stands  at  the 
transition  point  between  the  Old  Testa- 
ment doctrine  of  the  Spirit  on  the  one 
side  and  the  full  apostolic  unfolding  of 
the  doctrine  on  the  other  side.  In  the 
Old  Testament  the  emphasis  still  rests  on 
the  charismatic  character  of  the  Spirit's 
work  as  qualifying  the  office-bearers  of  the 
theocracy  for  their  task.  Jesus  began  to 
show  how  the  official  Spirit,  which  be- 
longs to  him  as  Messiah,  becomes  a 
source  of  communication  of  the  Spirit  to 
others,  and  that  not  merely  for  the  per- 
formance of  supernatural  works  but  also 
for  conferring  the  religious  and  moral 
blessings   of   the   kingdom.      The  part. 


I02   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

however,  of  our  Lord's  teaching  in  which 
the  connection  between  the  Spirit  and 
the  internal  aspect  of  the  kingdom  finds 
clearest  expression,  and  which  approaches 
most  closely  to  the  apostohc  type  of 
doctrine,  is  that  relating  to  the  church. 
With  this  we  shall  deal  in  a  later  chapter. 


CHAPTER  VII 

The  Essence  of  the  Kingdom  con- 
tinued :  The  Kingdom  in  the 
Sphere  of  Righteousness 

/N  regard  to  the  relation  between  the 
kingdom  and  righteousness  three 
lines  of  thought  can  be  distinguished 
in  the  teaching  of  Jesus.  According  to 
the  one  the  ideal  fulfilment  of  the  will 
of  God  in  man's  moral  life  is  in  itself 
a  revelation  of  the  divine  supremacy,  and 
the  act  of  declaring  man  righteous  in  it- 
self a  prerogative  of  the  divine  kingship. 
According  to  the  other  the  righteousness 
needed  by  man  appears  as  one  of  the 

103 


I04   The  Kijigdoni  mid  the  Church 

blessings  which  God  in  his  kingdom  be- 
stows. According  to  still  a  third  repre- 
sentation the  kingdom  is  given  as  a  reward 
for  the  practice  of  righteousness  in  this 
life.  Each  of  these  we  shall  consider 
separately. 

According  to  the  Old  Testament  and 
the  Semitic  conception  generally,  the 
kingship  and  the  exercise  of  legislative 
and  judicial  authority  are  inseparably 
united.  The  modern  distribution  of 
these  several  functions  of  government 
over  distinct  institutions  is  entirely  un- 
known. The  king  gives  laws  and  exe- 
cutes laws.  "To  judge"  and  "to 
reign"  are  synonymous  expressions. 
This  should  be  kept  in  mind  in  order  to 
apprehend  correctly  the  first  aspect  of 
our  Lord's  teaching  on  righteousness  as 
related  to  the  kingdom.  Righteousness 
is  always  taken  by  Jesus  in  a  specific 
sense  which  it  obtains  from  the  refer- 
ence to  God  as  Lawgiver  and  Judge. 
Our  modern  usage  of  the  word  is  often 


The  Sphere  of  Right eottsitess  105 

a  looser  one,  since  we  are  apt  to  associ- 
ate with  it  no  further  thought  than 
that  of  what  is  fair  and  equitable,  in- 
herently just.  To  Jesus  righteousness 
meant  all  this  and  much  more  than  this. 
It  meant  such  moral  conduct  and  such  a 
moral  state  as  are  right  when  measured 
by  the  supreme  norm  of  the  nature  and 
will  of  God,  so  that  they  form  a  repro- 
duction of  the  latter,  a  revelation,  as  it 
were,  of  the  moral  glory  of  God. 

When  the  disciples  are  exhorted  to  let 
their  light  shine  before  men  that  these 
may  see  their  good  works  and  glorify 
the  Father  in  heaven,  this  thought  is  ex- 
pressed in  terms  of  fatherhood,  but  the 
conception  of  glory  involved  is  closely 
allied  to  that  of  kingship.  In  the  Lord's 
Prayer  the  petition  **  Thy  kingdom 
come  "  naturally  leads  on  to  the  petition 
"Thy  will  be  done,  as  in  heaven,  so  on 
earth,"  so  that  the  fulfilment  of  the  will 
of  God  is  obviously  regarded  as  one  of 
the  principal  forms  in  which  his  king- 


io6   The  Kingdo7n  and  the  Chitrch 

ship  is  realized.  Its  consummate  expres- 
sion this  principle  finds  in  the  command- 
ment :  **  Ye  therefore  shall  be  perfect, 
as  your  heavenly  Father  is  perfect," 
Matt.  V.  48.  The  sayings  just  quoted 
affirm  not  merely  that  the  norm  of  right- 
eousness is  to  be  found  in  God,  they  like- 
wise imply  that  the  aim  of  righteousness, 
the  final  cause  of  obedience,  lies  in  God. 
Righteousness  is  to  be  sought  from  the 
pure  desire  of  satisfying  him,  who  is  the 
supreme  end  of  all  moral  existence. 

In  both  these  points  our  Lord's  teach- 
ing on  righteousness  was  no  less  vitally 
connected  with  his  conception  of  the  di- 
vine kingship  than  with  that  of  the  divine 
fatherhood.  And  in  both  respects  we 
must  place  his  teaching  over  against  the 
principles  and  tendencies  which  were  at 
work  in  the  Jewish  ethics  of  the  time, 
in  order  fully  to  appreciate  its  profound 
significance.  The  characteristic  faults  of 
the  Jewish  ethics  were  formalism,  casu- 
istry, an  inclination  to  emphasize  the  pro- 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness   107 

hibition  rather  than  the  commandment, 
and,  worst  of  all,  self-righteousness  and 
hypocrisy.  These  faults  proceeded  from 
a  twofold  source.  On  the  one  hand, 
Judaism  had  virtually  become  a  worship 
of  the  law  as  such.  The  dead  letter  of 
the  law  had  taken  the  place  of  the  living 
God.  The  majesty  and  authority  of  the 
holy  nature  and  perfect  will  of  God  were 
no  longer  felt  in  the  commandments. 
On  the  other  hand,  the  Jewish  law-ob- 
servance was  self-centered,  because  it  was 
chiefly  intended  to  be  the  instrument  for 
securing  the  blessedness  of  the  coming 
age. 

Where  the  norm  of  righteousness  is  a 
deified  law  rather  than  a  personal  law- 
giver, and  where  the  supreme  motive  for 
obedience  is  a  self-interested  one,  there 
inevitably  the  faults  above  enumerated 
must  make  their  appearance.  God  being 
kept  at  a  distance,  no  strong  need  will 
be  felt  for  yielding  more  than  compli- 
ance with  the  law  in  the  outward  act. 


io8   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Because  the  ultimate  root  in  which  all 
the  commandments  are  one  in  the  nature 
and  will  of  God  is  lost  sight  of,  the  law 
will  become  a  mere  aggregate  of  unre- 
lated precepts,  a  collection  of  statutory- 
ordinances,  for  adjusting  which  to  the 
compass  of  the  entire  outward  life  a  com- 
plicated system  of  the  most  refined  casu- 
istry will  be  required.  Because  the  con- 
trolling motive  is  self-centered,  the 
escape  from  transgression  will  form  a 
more  serious  concern  than  the  positive 
fulfilment  of  what  the  spirit  of  the  law 
demands.  Finally,  where  the  moral  life 
is  thus  concentrated  on  the  outward  con- 
duct, where  the  conscience  does  not 
search  and  judge  itself  in  the  presence 
of  the  personal  God,  who  knows  the 
heart,  there  the  sins  of  self-righteous- 
ness  and  hypocrisy  find  a  fertile  soil  for 
development. 

Such  was  the  moral  consciousness  in 
which  our  Lord  wrought  a  revolution 
by    enunciating    the   twofold    principle 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  109 

above  stated.  He  once  more  made 
the  voice  of  the  law  the  voice  of  the 
living  God,  who  is  present  in  every  com- 
mandment, so  absolute  in  his  demands, 
so  personally  interested  in  man's  conduct, 
so  all-observant,  that  the  thought  of 
yielding  to  him  less  than  the  whole  inner 
life,  the  heart,  the  soul,  the  mind,  the 
strength,  can  no  longer  be  tolerated. 
Thus  quickened  by  the  spirit  of  God's 
personality,  the  law  becomes  in  our 
Lord's  hands  a  living  organism,  in  which 
soul  and  body,  spirit  and  letter,  the 
greater  and  smaller  commandments  are 
to  be  distinguished,  and  which  admits  of 
being  reduced  to  great  comprehensive 
principles  in  whose  light  the  weight  and 
purport  of  all  single  precepts  are  to  be 
intelligently  appreciated. 

The  two  great  commandments  are  to 
love  God  supremely  and  one's  neighbor 
as  one's  self,  Mk.  xii.  30,  31.  The  prac- 
tical test  of  conduct  is  to  do  unto  men 
all  things  whatsoever  one  desires  to  have 


I  lo   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

done  to  one's  self,  for  this  is  the  sum- 
mary of  the  law  and  the  prophets,  Matt, 
vii.  12.  In  case  of  conflict  the  mere 
ceremonial  must  give  way  before  the 
ethical.  Matt.  v.  23,  24.  There  are  com- 
mandments in  reference  to  which  it  is 
sufficient  to  say  that  they  should  not  be 
left  undone,  such  as  the  tithing  of  mint, 
anise  and  cummin,  and  there  are  com- 
mandments of  such  supreme  and  intrinsic 
importance  as  to  demand  in  men  a  posi- 
tive and  energetic  determination  to  do 
them,  viz.,  the  weightier  matters  of  the 
law,  justice,  mercy  and  faith.  Matt,  xxiii. 
23.  Because  righteousness  is  a  matter 
of  immediate,  personal  concern  between 
the  soul  and  God,  it  can  rest  on  nothing 
else  than  the  divinely  revealed  command- 
ments, and  no  human  tradition  can  bind 
the  conscience  :  ''  Every  plant  which  the 
heavenly  Father  planted  not,  shall  be 
rooted  up,"  Matt.  xv.  13.  Finally, 
what  alone  can  impart  value  in  the  sight 
of  God  to  any  act  of  obedience  is  the 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  1 1 1 

sincerity  of  the  heart  from  which  it  pro- 
ceeds. Righteousness  must  be  fruit,  the 
organic  product  of  the  life  and  character, 
exponential  of  what  is  within,  Matt.  vii. 
16,  20  ;  xxi.  43. 

All  this  was  the  result  of  bringing  men 
face  to  face  with  God  as  the  righteous 
Lawgiver  and  King,  personally  cognizant 
of  every  man's  conduct.  In  view  of  it, 
it  is  hardly  necessary  to  observe  that  our 
Lord  also  represents  God  as  the  supreme 
Judge  of  the  moral  life.  To  be  right- 
eous is  strictly  speaking  equivalent  to 
being  justified  of  God.  And  this  ref- 
erence to  the  judgment  of  God  is  to 
Jesus  not  a  subordinate  matter,  it  is  an 
essential  ingredient  of  his  conception  of 
righteousness.  The  process  of  moral 
action  does  not  appear  complete  to  him 
until  it  receives  in  the  divine  justifying 
sentence  its  crown  and  consummation. 
The  right  to  hold  accountable  and  judge 
ranked  clearly  in  his  mind  among  the 
highest  of  God's  royal  prerogatives.    On 


112   The  Kingdom  a7id  the  Church 

this  point  he  carefully  preserved  the 
valuable  kernel  of  truth  contained  in 
the  exaggerated  Jewish  ideas  about  the 
forensic  relation  betw^een  God  and  man. 
While  making  much  of  the  divine  love, 
our  Lord  did  not  suffer  his  emphasis  on 
this  to  obscure  the  important  principle 
of  the  divine  justice.  In  correcting  the 
one-sidedness  of  Judaism,  which  had  no 
eye  for  the  grace  of  God,  he  did  not  fall 
into  the  opposite  extreme  of  reducing 
everything  to  the  love  of  God.  On  the 
contrary,  in  his  teaching  the  two  divine 
attributes  of  love  and  justice  are  perfectly 
balanced.  In  the  well-known  saying  of 
Matt.  vi.  33  we  can  observe  the  close  con- 
nection he  assumed  between  the  king- 
ship of  God  and  his  forensic  righteous- 
ness. The  disciples  are  here  urged,  first 
to  make  God's  kingdom  the  object  of 
their  pursuit,  and  then,  as  a  closer  speci- 
fication, to  seek  God's  righteousness. 
By  the  latter  is  meant  either  the  exercise 
of    God's    justifying     righteousness    on 


The  Sphere  of  RigJiteoitsness  1 1 3 

man's  behalf,  or  that  righteousness  as  a 
human  state,  which  is  counted  before 
God.  On  either  view,  the  kingship  of 
God  and  the  exercise  of  forensic  right- 
eousness are  intimately  associated. 

The  supreme  importance  w^hich  Jesus 
in  virtue  of  this  God-centered  concep- 
tion attached  to  righteousness  may  be  in- 
ferred from  the  fact  that  its  pursuit  is 
spoken  of  in  equally  absolute  terms  as  the 
seeking  of  the  kingdom.  It  is  the  high- 
est concern  of  the  disciple.  He  must 
hunger  and  thirst  after  it,  treat  it  as  the 
very  sustenance  of  his  life,  the  only  thing 
that  will  satisfy  his  most  instinctive  desires. 
He  must  submit  to  persecution  for  its 
sake.  Matt  v.  6,  10.  All  this  becomes 
intelligible  only  on  the  assumption  that 
to  Jesus  the  question  of  right  and  wrong 
was  not  a  purely  moral,  but  in  the 
deepest  sense  a  religious  question.  His 
teaching  on  righteousness  means  the 
subsumption  of  ethics  under  religion. 

We  need  not  wonder  that  with  such  a 


1 1 4   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

sublime  conception  of  what  righteous- 
ness impUed,  even  this  aspect  of  the 
kingdom,  in  which  formally  at  least,  it 
closely  resembled  the  Jewish  idea  of  the 
already  existing  reign  of  God  through 
the  law,  appeared  nevertheless  to  Jesus 
as  something  future.  The  kingdom  had 
yet  to  come,  because  it  consisted  in  an 
observance  of  the  law  conformed  to  an 
altogether  new  ideal,  practised  in  an  al- 
together new  spirit.  Something  far 
greater  and  higher  stood  before  his  mind 
than  had  ever  been  contemplated  by  the 
mind  of  Judaism.  Thus  the  God-cen- 
tered ideal  of  righteousness  itself  prepared 
the  way  for  the  second  line  of  thought 
traceable  in  our  Lord's  teaching  on  the 
subject,  viz.,  that  righteousness  is  one  of 
the  blessings  to  be  bestowed  in  the  king- 
dom. For  this  there  was  an  Old  Testa- 
ment basis.  The  prophets  had  predicted 
that  the  lawgiving  function  of  Jehovah's 
kingship  would  enter  upon  a  new  stage 
in   the   Messianic    age.      According  to 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  1 1 5 

Jeremiah  God  will  then  write  his  law 
upon  the  hearts  of  the  people,  xxxi.  33. 
According  to  Ezekiel  he  will  make  Israel 
to  walk  in  his  statutes,  xxxvi.  27.  The 
prophecies  in  the  second  part  of  Isaiah's 
book  promise  an  impartation  of  righteous- 
ness to  the  people  of  God  as  a  result  of 
a  new  marvelous  disclosure  of  Jehovah's 
own  righteousness  in  the  future.  Jesus, 
who  derived  so  many  evangelical  ideas 
from  the  last-mentioned  source,  may 
have  had  these  prophecies  in  mind,  when 
in  the  Sermon  on  the  Mount  he  spoke  of 
such  as  hunger  and  thirst  after  righteous- 
ness. Is.  Iv.  1.  At  any  rate  the  other 
beatitudes  show  that  the  state  of  mind 
here  described  is  a  receptive  rather  than 
a  productive  one.  The  hungering  and 
thirsting  stand  on  a  line  with  the  poor 
and  the  meek,  they  are  conscious  of 
not  possessing  the  desired  good  in  them- 
selves and  look  to  God  for  supplying  it. 
When  they  are  satisfied,  this  is  due  not 
to  their  own  effort  but  to  an  act  of  God. 


1 1 6  The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

The  same  thought  is  indirectly  expressed 
in  the  *'  seeking  "  of  righteousness  com- 
manded in  Matt.  vi.  33.  In  the  parable 
of  the  Pharisee  and  publican  the  term 
**  justification  "  is  applied  to  an  acceptance 
of  man  by  God  not  based  on  self-right- 
eous works,  but  on  penitence  and  trust  in 
the  divine  mercy. 

It  would  be  historically  unwarranted 
to  read  into  these  utterances  the  whole 
doctrine  of  the  imputed  righteousness  of 
Christ.  It  was  impossible  for  Jesus  to 
develop  this  doctrine  with  any  degree  of 
explicitness,  because  it  was  to  be  based  on 
his  own  atoning  death,  which  still  lay  in 
the  future.  Our  Lord  speaks  of  a  state 
of  righteousness  before  God  to  be  con- 
ferred as  a  part  of  the  coming  kingdom. 
How  far  this  will  be  done  by  imputation, 
how  far  it  will  also  be  done  by  changing 
the  heart  and  life  of  men  so  as  to  pro- 
duce works  which  God  will  be  able  in 
principle  to  approve  in  his  judgment, 
which  of  these  two  will  be  the  basis  of 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  1 1 7 

the  other  is  not  clearly  explained.  Our 
Lord's  doctrine  is  the  bud  in  which  the 
two  conceptions  of  a  righteousness  im- 
puted and  a  righteousness  embodied  in 
the  sanctified  life  of  the  believer  still  lie 
enclosed  together.  Still  it  should  not  be 
overlooked,  that  in  more  than  one  re- 
spect Jesus  prepared  the  way  for  Paul 
by  enunciating  principles  to  which  the 
latter's  teaching  could  attach  itself.  He 
emphasized  that  in  the  pursuit  of  right- 
eousness the  satisfaction  of  God  should 
be  man's  supreme  concern.  This,  car- 
ried out  to  its  ultimate  consequences  with 
reference  to  sinful  man,  could  not  but 
lead  to  the  conception  of  a  righteousness 
provided  by  God  himself  in  the  perfect 
life  and  atoning  death  of  Christ.  He 
also  affirmed  that  the  righteousness  re- 
quired of  the  disciples  was  of  an  infinitely 
higher  kind  than  that  possessed  by  the 
Scribes  and  Pharisees,  something  as  new 
and  unprecedented  as  the  kingdom  itself, 
and  thus  raised  the  problem  as  to  how  this 


1 1 8   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

unique  standing  before  God  was  to  be 
acquired.  Still  further,  he  gave  to  un- 
derstand that  this  righteousness  was  at- 
tainable by  the  disciples  only,  so  that  it 
must  be  held  to  rest  on  a  previous  state 
of  acceptance  by  God,  determined  by  his 
fatherhood  and  grace. 

The  third  representation  connects  the 
kingdom  with  righteousness  practised  in 
this  life  as  a  reward.  Here  obviously  the 
kingdom  denotes  not  the  kingship  of 
God,  but  the  entire  complex  of  resulting 
blessings,  and  that  as  they  will  be  be- 
stowed in  the  last  day.  Thus  in  Matt, 
v.  20,  the  possession  of  a  righteousness 
exceeding  that  of  the  Scribes  and  Phari- 
sees appears  as  a  prerequisite  for  enter- 
ing the  kingdom.  The  same  idea  un- 
derlies the  numerous  passages  that  speak 
of  a  future  reward.  It  has  been  asserted 
that  Jesus  retained  this  whole  line  of 
thought,  because  he  had  not  fully  eman- 
cipated himself  from  the  fundamental 
error  of  Judaism,  according   to  which 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  119 

everything  in  religion  revolved  around 
the  ideas  of  merit  and  rew^ard.  The 
charge,  if  well-founded,  would  be  a  se- 
rious one,  for  the  principle  in  question, 
far  from  appearing  in  isolated  sayings 
only,  prevades  the  entire  teaching  of 
Jesus.  The  disciple's  life  is  depicted 
throughout  as  a  labor  in  the  vineyard,  at 
the  plow,  in  the  harvest-field,  in  the 
household.  Treasures  can  be  laid  up  in 
heaven. 

In  order  to  solve  this  difficulty  it  is 
necessary  sharply  to  distinguish.  The 
first  thing  to  remember  is  that  we  have 
no  right  to  declare  the  desire  for  re- 
ward as  a  motive  in  ethical  conduct 
unworthy  of  a  high  standard  of  morality 
and  therefore  unworthy  of  the  better 
element  in  our  Lord's  own  teaching. 
This  would  be  the  case  only,  if  it  figured 
as  the  only  or  the  supreme  motive,  and 
if  other  motives  of  a  disinterested  God- 
centered  kind  did  not  exist  side  by  side 
with  or  above  it.     If  our  Lord  appealed 


1 20   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

to  the  fear  of  punishment  as  a  deterrent 
from  evil,  why  should  he  not  have  ap- 
pealed to  the  desire  for  blessedness  and 
reward  as  an  incentive  to  the  good? 
May  we  not  believe  that  Jesus  himself 
was  strengthened  in  enduring  his  suffer- 
ing by  the  prospect  of  the  promised 
glory  ?  cf.  Heb.  xii.  2.  Does  anybody 
think  that  in  his  case  this  interfered  in 
the  least  with  his  making  it  his  meat  and 
his  drink  to  do  the  Father's  will  ? 

Secondly,  it  should  be  emphasized  that 
the  stimulus  afforded  by  the  promise  of 
reward  need  not  appeal  to  the  lower, 
sensual  instincts,  as  but  too  often  it  did 
in  the  Jewish  mind,  but  may  equally  well 
address  itself  to  the  highest,  spiritual  de- 
sires. In  this  respect  our  Lord's  teach- 
ing moves  on  the  highest  conceivable 
plane.  The  pure  in  heart  shall  see  God, 
those  that  hunger  and  thirst  after  right- 
eousness shall  be  completely  satisfied  with 
the  same,  the  peacemakers  shall  be  called 
sons   of     God.      These  second    clauses 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  121 

in  the  beatitudes  describe  the  essence  of 
the  final  kingdom  in  which  the  reward 
will  consist.  They  show,  therefore,  that 
the  reward  towards  which  Jesus  points 
his  followers  is  not  something  morally 
or  spiritually  indifferent,  but  the  highest 
enjoyment  of  what  here  already  consti- 
tutes the  natural  blessedness  pertaining 
to  the  internal  kingdom.  Thus  the  re- 
ward bears  an  organic  relation  to  the 
conduct  it  is  intended  to  crown. 

Still  further,  we  must  observe  that 
there  is  a  fundamental  difference  between 
the  manner  in  which  Judaism  conceived 
of  the  principle  of  reward  and  Jesus' 
conception  of  the  same  as  regards  the 
necessity  with  which  this  principle  was 
believed  to  operate.  According  to  the 
Jews  this  was  a  legal  necessity  ;  the  ful- 
filment of  the  law  being  inherently 
worthy  of  and  entitled  to  the  reward 
following  it.  Hence  also  there  existed 
between  the  two  a  ratio  of  strict  equiva- 
lence, so  much  being  given  for  so  much. 


122   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Jesus  plainly  taught  that  between  God 
and  man  no  such  commercial  relation 
can  exist,  not  merely  because  this  is  im- 
possible on  account  of  man's  sin,  but  for 
the  deeper  reason,  that  God's  absolute 
sovereignty  precludes  it  even  under  the 
conditions  of  human  rectitude,  because 
God  as  God  is  entitled,  apart  from  every 
contract  or  stipulation  of  reward,  to  all 
the  service  or  obedience  man  can  render. 
The  disciples  are  **  unprofitable  serv- 
ants," even  after  they  have  done  every- 
thing required  of  them,  Lk.  xvii.  10. 
They  are  *'  unprofitable  "  not  in  the 
sense  that  their  labors  are  useless,  but  in 
the  sense  that  they  can  do  no  more  for 
God  their  owner,  than  he  can  naturally  ex- 
pect of  them.  In  the  parable,  the  talents, 
for  the  increase  of  which  the  servants  are 
rewarded,  are  not  originally  their  own 
but  entrusted  to  them  by  their  Lord. 
As  a  result  the  relation  of  pure  equiva- 
lence between  what  is  done  and  what 
is   received  is   entirely  abolished.     The 


The  Sphere  of  Righteousness  123 

reward  will  far  exceed  the  righteousness 
which  precedes  it.  He  that  is  faithful 
over  a  few  things  will  be  set  over  many 
things,  nay  over  all  things,  Matt.  xxiv. 
47 ;  XXV.  21,  23.  He  who  receives  a 
prophet  or  a  righteous  man  obtains  a  re- 
ward as  great  as  that  of  the  prophet  and 
the  righteous  men,  Matt.  x.  41,  42. 
Restitution  will  be  a  hundredfold  for 
things  given  up,  Mk.  x.  30.  And  the 
parable  of  the  laborers  in  the  vineyard 
teaches  that  in  its  ultimate  analysis  the  re- 
ward is  a  free  gift,  whence  also  the  one 
who  has  labored  but  a  little  while  can 
receive  the  full  wages,  Matt.  xx.  1-16 ; 
cf.  Lk.  xvii.  10. 

We  see,  therefore,  that  Jesus,  though 
giving  a  large  place  to  the  idea  of  reward 
in  his  teaching,  keeps  this  idea  in  strict 
subordination  to  the  two  higher  princi- 
ples of  the  divine  sovereignty  and  the 
divine  grace,  in  other  words  to  the  di- 
vine kingship  and  the  divine  fatherhood. 
In  the  latter   respect  as  well  as  in  the 


1 24   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

former  the  relation  between  God  and 
the  disciples  does  not  admit  of  the  giving 
or  receiving  of  rewards  on  the  strictly 
commercial  basis.  The  Father,  as  Father, 
gives  to  the  little  flock  the  kingdom,  and 
in  general  bestows  good  gifts  upon  his 
children.  What  can  be  called  wages 
from  one  point  of  view  is  a  gracious  gift 
from  another,  cf.  Matt.  v.  46  with  Lk. 
vi.  32,  35.  The  reward  serves  simply 
the  purpose  of  affording  an  incentive  to 
the  disciples'  zeal.  Though  the  king- 
dom itself  is  inherited  by  all,  and  inherited 
by  grace,  there  will  be  individual  degrees 
in  the  glory  which  it  involves  for  each 
disciple,  because  the  ultimate  issue  can- 
not but  be  determined  by  the  progress 
in  righteousness  made  here  below. 


CHAPTER  VIII 

The  Essence  of  the  Kingdom  con- 
tinued:  The  Kingdom  as  a  State 
of  Blessedness 

T  TT^^  have  already  seen,  that  not 
1^1^  the  thought  of  man's  welfare, 
but  that  of  the  glory  of  God  was 
supreme  in  our  Lord's  teaching  concern- 
ing the  kingdom.  While  emphasizing 
this,  we  must  not  forget,  however,  that 
to  him  this  thought  was  inseparably  con- 
nected with  the  idea  of  the  greatest 
conceivable  blessedness  for  man.  That 
God  should  reign  was  in  his  view  so 
much  the  only  natural,  normal  state  of 

125 


1 26   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

things,  that  he  could  not  conceive 
of  any  true  happiness  apart  from  it,  nor 
of  it  without  a  concomitant  state  of  happi- 
ness for  those  who  give  to  God  the  first 
and  the  highest  place.  This  is  in  general 
the  connection  between  the  kingship  of 
God  as  a  rule  over  man,  and  the  king- 
dom of  God  as  a  possession  for  man,  a 
connection  not  obscurely  indicated  in 
the  saying,  Matt.  vi.  33.  With  the  king- 
ship of  God  all  other  things  must  come, 
for,  as  Paul  later  expressed  it :  ''  If  God 
be  for  us,  who  shall  be  against  us  ?  " 
That  this  thought  is  not  more  fre- 
quently and  more  directly  formulated 
admits  of  easy  explanation.  In  deriv- 
ing the  state  of  blessedness  from  the 
character  and  will  of  God  it  was  so 
natural  to  think  of  the  divine  father- 
hood as  its  source,  that  the  reference 
to  God's  kingship  would  scarcely  sug- 
gest itself.  Accordingly  we  find  that 
the  kingdom  as  a  state  of  blessedness  is 
represented   as  the   Father's  gift  to  the 


A  State  of  Blessedness     127 

little  flock  rather  than  that  of  the  King, 
Lk.  xii.  32;  cf.  also  Matt.  xx.  32.  It 
was  quite  possible,  however,  to  reach 
the  idea  of  blessedness  by  way  of  direct 
inference  from  that  of  the  divine  king- 
ship. The  Oriental  king  often  bestows 
with  royal  munificence  all  manner  of 
gifts  upon  his  subjects.  Illustrations  of 
this  both  from  sacred  and  other  history 
will  easily  occur.  Thus  Jesus  also  speaks 
of  the  kingdom  under  the  figure  of  a 
banquet  prepared  by  the  king  as  a  mar- 
riage feast  for  his  son,  Matt.  xxii.  2. 
Nor  should  it  be  forgotten  that  the 
kingdom  had  been  for  Israel  the  instru- 
ment of  gracious  help  in  times  of  dis- 
tress and  a  source  of  great  national  pros- 
perity. The  kingship  had  been  in  its 
ideal  intent,  and  to  some  extent,  at  least 
in  its  better  days,  also  in  effect  a  demo- 
cratic institution,  to  which  the  poor  and 
the  oppressed  and  miserable  looked  for 
aid  and  protection.  There  was  there- 
fore an  easy  transition  from  the  idea  of 


1 28   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

kingship    to    that  of    grace    and    salva- 
tion. 

The  inestimable  value  of  the  kingdom 
from  man's  point  of  view  finds  clearest 
expression  in  the  parable  of  the  treasure 
in  the  field  and  the  pearl  of  great  price. 
In  both  cases  it  is  emphasized  that  the 
finder  sells  all  his  possessions  in  order  to 
secure  this  one  transcendent  good,  cf. 
Matt.  xix.  12  ;  Mk.  ix.  43-47  ;  Lk.  xviii. 
29.  That  God  himself  regards  the  king- 
dom in  this  light  appears  from  the  fact  of 
his  having  prepared  it  for  his  own  from 
eternity,  Matt.  xxv.  34.  The  prepara- 
tion from  eternity  shows,  that  the  king- 
dom is  the  supreme  embodiment  of  the 
divine  gracious  purpose.  Hence  also  the 
kingdom  is  said  to  be  **  inherited."  Be- 
cause the  kingdom  thus  includes  all  that 
is  truly  valuable  and  precious,  our  Lord 
in  connection  with  the  kingdom-parables 
pronounces  the  disciples  blessed  who  see 
and  hear  the  truth  concerning  it.  In  do- 
ing this  they  are  brought  into  immediate 


A  State  of  Blessedness     129 

contact  with  the  fulfilment  of  all  the  Old 
Testament  promises.  What  many  proph- 
ets and  righteous  men  in  vain  desired  to 
see  and  hear,  is  theirs  in  actual  possession, 
Matt.  xiii.  16, 17. 

Looked  at  concretely,  the  blessings 
in  which  the  kingdom  consists  are 
partly  negative,  partly  positive  in  charac- 
ter. Negatively,  the  kingdom  includes 
the  deliverance  from  all  evil.  Fore- 
most among  the  blessings  pertaining 
to  this  side  stands  the  forgiveness  of  sins. 
Prophecy  had  already  spoken  of  this  as 
an  important  element  in  the  blessedness 
of  the  Messianic  age,  Jer.  xxxi.  34.  That 
Jesus  considered  this  not  merely  as  a  prep- 
aration for  the  kingdom,  but  counted  it 
of  the  very  substance  of  the  same  may  be 
seen  from  Matt,  xviii.  23  ff.,  where  the 
kingdom  of  heaven  is  likened  unto  a  cer- 
tain king,  who  graciously  forgives  the 
debt  of  his  servant  and  releases  him. 
Hence  also  the  sequence  in  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  where  the  petition  for  the  com- 


130  The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

ing  of  the  kingdom  is  followed  first  by 
that  for  the  accomplishment  of  the  will 
of  God  and  next  by  that  for  the  forgive- 
ness of  debts.  Positively  there  corre- 
sponds to  this  the  gift  of  righteousness, 
which  cannot  but  carry  with  itself  a  sense 
of  the  highest  spiritual  delight  and  satis- 
faction for  those  who  obtain  it.  The 
mind  relieved  from  the  burden  of  sin  and 
assured  of  the  divine  acceptance  enters 
upon  a  state  of  profound  peace  and  rest, 
Matt.  xi.  28,  29  ;  Mk.  v.  34  ;  Lk.  vii.  50. 
The  positive  side  of  the  blessedness  re- 
ceived in  the  kingdom  is  chiefly  described 
in  the  two  important  conceptions  of  son- 
ship  and  of  life.  On  these,  therefore, 
we  must  briefly  dwell  at  this  point. 
While  the  two  attributes  of  kingship  and 
fatherhood  mark  two  distinct  elements  in 
Jesus'  conception  of  God,  he  certainly 
did  not  place  them  wide  apart,  much  less 
regard  them  as  intrinsically  opposed  to 
each  other.  The  ease  with  which  he 
passes  over  from  the  one  to  the  other, 


A  State  of  Blessedness     131 

e.  g.,  in  the  opening  words  of  the  Lord's 
Prayer,  shows  that  to  his  mind  the  two 
are  perfectly  harmonious  attributes  of  the 
divine  nature.  There  is  a  sense  in  which 
the  effects  of  God's  fatherhood  can  be 
subsumed  under  the  kingdom-idea.  As 
on  the  one  hand  the  kingship  might 
frequently  originate  through  extension  of 
the  patriarchal  authority  beyond  the  lim- 
its of  the  tribe,  so  on  the  other  hand  the 
king  could  continue  to  sustain  the  relation 
of  a  father  to  his  people.  In  point  of 
fact  the  Old  Testament  represents  Je- 
hovah as  by  one  and  the  same  act  becom- 
ing Israel's  King  and  Israel's  Father,  viz., 
by  the  deliverance  of  the  exodus,  Ex.  iv. 
22  ;  Deut.  xxxii.  6  ;  Isa.  xliii.  15. 

That  the  place  which  belongs  to  son- 
ship  as  one  of  the  blessings  of  the  king- 
dom is  not  always  recognized  with  suffi- 
cient clearness  finds  its  explanation  in  a 
widely  current  misunderstanding  of  our 
Lord's  teaching  on  sonship.  He  is  fre- 
quently interpreted  as  teaching  the  in- 


132    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

discriminate  sonship  of  all  men.  Sonship 
then  would  be  something  which  did  not 
in  any  sense  originate  with  the  redemp- 
tive relation  to  God  or  with  the  kingdom 
of  God.  It  is  easy  here  to  go  to  an  ex- 
treme as  well  in  absolutely  denying  as  in 
indiscriminately  affirming  that  our  Lord 
made  men  the  sons  of  God  by  nature. 
Some  of  his  utterances,  like  the  parable 
of  the  prodigal  son,  plainly  imply  that 
notwithstanding  the  sinner's  estrange- 
ment from  God  a  filial  relationship  con- 
tinues to  exist.  The  whole  trend  of  his 
teaching  is  that  redemption  restores  what 
has  been  disturbed  by  sin.  But,  granting 
this,  we  must  not  overlook  two  important 
considerations  which  would  inevitably 
lead  him  to  emphasize  the  newness  of 
the  sonship  which  is  enjoyed  in  the  re- 
demptive state.  On  the  one  hand,  Jesus 
had  too  profound  a  knowledge  of  the  se- 
riousness of  sin  not  to  recognize  that  it 
must  render  man  unworthy  and  incapable 
of  sonship  in  the  full,  original  sense.    On 


A  State  of  Blessedness     133 

the  other  hand,  he  had  also  too  high  a 
conception  of  the  transcendent  perfection 
of  the  kingdom  not  to  find  in  it  in  this 
respect  as  well  as  in  others  something 
that  would  far  surpass  any  religious  priv- 
ilege that  man  could  call  his  own  by 
nature.  The  kingdom  neutralizes  the 
effects  of  sin,  but  it  does  far  more  than 
this.  It  carries  man  to  the  highest  limit 
of  knowledge  and  love  and  service  and 
enjoyment  of  God  of  which  he  is  capable, 
and  nothing  less  than  the  attainment  of 
this  our  Lord  associates  with  the  term 
"sonship."  The  words  recorded  in  Lk. 
XX.  36,  **  They  are  equal  unto  the  angels  ; 
and  are  sons  of  God,  being  sons  of  the 
resurrection,"  suffice  to  show  that  sonship 
to  God  appeared  to  him  as  the  acme 
rather  than  as  the  common  level  of  re- 
ligious privilege,  cf.  also  Matt.  v.  9. 

And  not  only  the  sonship  of  man,  even 
the  fatherhood  of  God  admits  of  this  high 
and  exclusive  application.  For  Jesus 
constantly  speaks  to  the  disciples  of  "  your 


134  ^^^^  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Father,"  Matt.  vi.  32.  "  The  Father  "  in 
the  Synoptical  Gospels  always  denotes 
God  in  relation  to  **  the  Son,"  i.  e.,  Jesus 
specifically.  In  the  Fourth  Gospel, 
where  ^^  The  Father"  is  also  used  with 
reference  to  the  disciples  generally,  this 
is  not  based  on  a  conception  of  universal 
fatherhood,  but  on  the  thought  that  the 
relation  originally  existing  between  God 
and  Jesus  is  extended  to  the  disciples 
likewise.  This,  therefore,  is  the  most 
emphatic  assertion  of  the  unique  value  of 
sonship.  And  this  value  was  not  confined 
in  our  Lord's  estimation  to  the  moral 
sphere,  as  one-sided  modern  representa- 
tions sometimes  make  out.  Sonship  in- 
volves more  than  moral  likeness  to  God, 
although  this  is  of  course  one  of  its  chief 
elements.  Its  rich  religious  meaning 
may  be  best  perceived  from  the  jubilant 
words  in  which  Jesus  speaks  of  his  own 
filial  relation  to  the  Father,  Matt.  xi. 
27,  which,  while  unique  in  one  sense, 
must  yet  bear  a  general  resemblance  to 


A  State  of  Blessedness     135 

the  sonship  of  the  disciples.  The  most 
perfect  mutual  knowledge,  the  most  di- 
rect communion  of  life,  the  most  absolute 
unity  of  purpose,  the  joint  possession  of 
consummate  blessedness  and  peace  be- 
tween God  and  man,  all  this  forms  part 
of  the  sonship  in  which  the  kingdom 
consists.  The  highest  gift  that  can  be 
bestowed  on  the  pure  in  heart  is  that 
in  the  final  kingdom  they  shall  have 
the  beatific  filial  vision  of  God  face  to 
face. 

The  second  comprehensive  term  by 
which  Jesus  describes  the  blessedness  of 
the  kingdom  is  that  of  life.  The  Old 
Testament  idea  of  life  has  for  its  promi- 
nent characteristics  not  so  much  the  ele- 
ments of  growth  and  activity  but  rather 
those  of  prosperity  and  happiness  in  the 
possession  of  the  favor  of  God.  To  this 
our  Lord  in  his  Synoptical  teaching  in  the 
main  adheres  ;  only,  in  harmony  with  the 
prevailing  Jewish  usage,  he  projects  the 
idea    into    the    future,  life  being    here 


136  The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

equivalent  to  the  sum  total  of  the  bless- 
ings and  enjoyments  of  the  final  kingdom. 
Still  even  in  the  Synoptical  teaching  we 
find  life  occasionally  spoken  of  as  a  pres- 
Vy  ent  religious  possession,  and,  therefore, 
j\  as  in  its  very  essence  a  spiritual  state, 
V  Matt.  viii.  22  ;  Lk.  xv.  24,  32  ;  xx.  38. 
A  present  kingdom  necessarily  carries 
with  itself  a  present  enjoyment  of  life. 
And  in  the  same  degree  as  this  is  the  case 
life  also  tends  to  become  a  life  in  the  sub- 
jective sense  of  the  word,  a  name  for  the 
believer's  spiritual  growth  and  activity, 
something  to  be  **lived"  as  well  as 
''inherited."  In  the  discourses  of  the 
Fourth  Gospel  we  can  clearly  observe 
how  our  Lord  developes  the  idea  in  these 
two  directions.  His  classical  definition 
of  life  is  found  in  the  so-called  high- 
priestly  prayer :  to  know  the  only  true 
God,  and  him  whom  he  did  send,  even 
Jesus  Christ,  Jno.  xvii.  3.  The  knowl- 
edge of  God  here  spoken  of  is,  of 
course,    something   which   in    principle 


A  State  of  Blessedness     137 

is  already  imparted  in  the  present, 
although  its  consummate  possession  still 
lies  in  the  future.  It  is  a  knowledge 
which  is  far  more  than  mere  intellectual 
cognition :  it  includes  that  practical  ac- 
quaintance, that  affectionate  apprehen- 
sion, which  arise  from  congeniality  of 
nature  and  the  highest  spiritual  love. 
Hence  what  introduces  into  it  is  not  a 
process  of  instruction,  but  a  birth  from 
above,  or  a  re-birth,  whereby  the  funda- 
mental character  is  changed,  so  that  from 
flesh,  which  naturally  lives  for  this  lower, 
earthly,  sensual  world,  it  becomes  spirit, 
which  naturally  lives  for  the  world  of 
heaven  and  for  God.  Because  Jesus 
is  the  personal  representative  and  em- 
bodiment of  this  heavenly  life  on 
earth,  he  is  the  way  unto  God,  Jno. 
xiv.  6. 

We  see,  therefore,  how  thoroughly 
this  life,  which  constitutes  man's  blessed 
possession  of  the  kingdom,  is  dominated 
by  the  thought  of  communion  with  God, 


138    The  Kitigdom  and  the  Church 

as  its  chief  source  of  enjoyment.  In 
principle,  however,  the  same  thing  is 
implied  in  some  of  the  Synoptical  say- 
ings cited  above,  which  approach  the 
conception  of  life  as  something  to  be 
developed  in  man.  When  the  prod- 
igal in  his  hunger  remembers  the  riches 
of  his  Father's  house,  he  is  said  to  have 
*' come  to  himself."  His  return  to  the 
Father  is  described  as  a  change  from 
death  into  life  :  **  This  thy  brother  was 
dead,  and  is  alive  again,  and  was  lost  and 
is  found,"  Lk.  xv.  32.  Thus  the  re- 
adoption  to  sonship  and  the  restoration 
to  life  are  seen  to  coincide.  If  Jesus 
found  in  both  the  essence  of  the  king- 
dom-privilege and  kingdom-blessedness, 
which  can  be  enjoyed  on  earth,  we 
cannot  doubt,  that  he  also  regarded 
them  as  supreme  among  the  treasures 
and  delights  of  the  final  kingdom.  As 
the  point  of  departure  for  his  kingdom- 
conception  lay  in  God,  in  the  active  ex- 
ercise of  God's  royal  sway,  so  its  point 


A  State  of  Blessedness     139 

of  arrival  lies  in  God,  in  God's  gift  of 
himself  to  man  for  everlasting  possession. 
It  is  the  teaching  of  Jesus,  as  well  as  of 
Paul,  that  from  God  and  through  God 
and  unto  God  are  all  things. 


CHAPTER  IX 

The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

rHE  conception  of  the  kingdom  is 
common   to    all   periods   of    our 
Lord's     teaching,      that    of    the 
I  \      church  emerges  only  at  two  special  points 
V^     of  his  ministry  as  recorded  in  Matt.  xvi. 
18  and  xviii.   17.     The  second  of  these 
two  passages  refers  to  the  church  quite 
incidentally,  and,  even  if  it  speaks  of  the 
Christian  church  and   not,  as  some  have 
thought,  of  the  Jewish  ecclesiastical  or- 
ganization, throws   no    further  light  on 
the  conception.     The  first  on  the   other 
hand  deals  with  the  church  for  the  ex- 
140 


The  Church  141 

press  purpose  of  introducing  it  as  some- 
thing new,  of  describing  its  character 
and  defining  its  relation  to  the  kingdom. 
We  are  fortunate  in  having  so  explicit  a 
statement  of  our  Lord  on  this  important 
matter.  The  subject  should,  of  course, 
be  approached  historically.  We  must 
ask  ourselves  what  there  was  in  the 
situation  of  that  particular  juncture  of 
our  Lord's  ministry  that  will  account  for 
this  solitary  and  significant  declaration 
about  the  church.  Simon  Peter  had  just 
made  his  important  confession,  *'  Thou 
art  the  Christ,  the  Son  of  the  living  God." 
Our  Lord  thereupon  announces  that 
upon  Peter,  as  the  first  confessor  of  his 
Messiahship  in  the  face  of  the  unbelief 
of  the  majority  of  the  people,  he  w^ill 
build  his  church,  his  ecclesia.  The  sup- 
position is  not  that  Peter  has  here  for  the 
first  time  reached  this  conviction  regard- 
ing the  Messianic  dignity  of  Jesus,  nor 
even  that  here  for  the  first  time  utter- 
ance was  given  to  such  conviction.     Un- 


142   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

less  we  must  disbelieve  all  our  Gospels, 
both  had  taken  place  on  earlier  occasions. 
But  the  momentous  significance  of  the 
present  confession  lay  in  this,  that  it  was 
made  at  a  juncture  where  many,  who 
had  previously  followed  Jesus,  had  for- 
saken him.  It  is  the  rock- character,  the 
steadfastness  of  Peter  that  is  praised  by 
Jesus,  that,  when  others  wavered,  he 
had  remained  true  to  his  conviction. 
The  revelation  he  had  received  from  the 
Father  in  heaven  was  not  the  first  disclo- 
sure of  Jesus'  Messiahship,  but  a  revela- 
tion which  enabled  him,  in  distinction 
from  the  multitude,  to  discern  in  Jesus 
the  true  attributes  of  Messiahship,  not- 
withstanding the  outward  appearance  to 
the  contrary, 
i  Peter's  confession,  therefore,  was  dis- 
tinctly a  confession  which  stood  in  con- 
trast with  the  rejection  of  Jesus  by  others. 
From  this  we  may  gather,  that  the 
church  of  which  Jesus  speaks  will  have 
for  its  peculiarity  the  recognition  of  the 


The  Church  143 

Messiahship  of  Jesus  in  contradistinction 
from  the  denial  of  this  Messiahship  by 
those  without.  But  this  follows  not 
only  from  the  situation  in  which  the 
words  were  spoken,  we  may  also  draw 
the  same  conclusion  from  the  tenor  of 
the  words  themselves.  When  Jesus 
says  ** I  will  build  my  church,"  he  evi- 
dently places  this  church  over  against 
another,  to  which  this  designation  does 
not  apply.  The  word  Ecclesia  is  the 
rendering  of  the  Hebrew  words  Qahal 
and  ' Edah,  which  latter  were  the  standing 
names  for  the  congregation  of  Israel.  In 
such  a  connection  **my  church"  can 
mean  nothing  else  than  **  the  church 
which  by  recognizing  me  as  Messiah  will 
take  the  place  of  the  present  Jewish 
church."  "^ 

It  would  be  a  mistake,   however,   to\ 
suppose  that  the   new  church   will  rest 
exclusively  on  a  subjective  belief  regard- 
ing the  Messiahship  of  Jesus.    Our  Lord 
says   emphatically  *'  I   will   build,"    and 


144    ^^^^  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

thereby  appropriates  for  himself  the 
objective  task  of  calling  this  church  into 
existence  by  his  Messianic  acts.  Though 
Peter  confessing  be  the  foundation,  the 
church  is  not  of  Peter's  or  of  any  human 
making,  the  Lord  himself  will  build  it. 
And  not  only  this,  he  will  supremely 
rule  in  it,  for  out  of  the  fulness  of  his 
authority  he  immediately  proceeds  to  in- 
vest Peter  with  the  power  of  the  keys : 
**I  will  give  unto  thee. "  Objectively  con- 
sidered, therefore,  the  church  is  that  new 
congregation  taking  the  place  of  the 
old  congregation  of  Israel,  which  is 
formed  by  Jesus  as  the  Messiah  and 
stands  under  his  Messianic  rule. 

Even  this,  however,  does  not  fully  ex- 
haust the  import  of  our  Lord's  statement. 
It  will  be  noticed,  that  he  refers  both 
the  building  of  the  church  and  the  ex- 
ercise of  his  authority  with  regard  to  it 
to  the  future  :  **  I  will  build  "  and  ''  I 
will  give."  At  the  present  time  of 
speaking   the   church  is   not  yet ;  if  its 


The  Church  145 

origin  and  government  depend  on  the 
Messiahship  of  Jesus,  then  clearly  this 
Messiahship  must  here  be  taken  in  a 
specific  sense,  the  realization  of  which 
also  still  lay  in  the  future.  Our  Lord 
can  refer  to  nothing  else  than  the  new 
exalted,  heavenly  state  upon  which  his 
person  and  work  would  enter  through 
his  death  and  resurrection  and  seating  at 
the  right  hand  of  God.  In  order  to 
understand  this  we  must  remember  that 
Jesus,  while  in  one  sense  conscious  of 
having  Messianic  authority  and  doing 
Messianic  work  already  here  on  earth, 
yet  in  another  sense  regarded  the  exer- 
cise of  his  Messianic  function  as  begin- 
ning with  his  state  of  glory.  It  was  en- 
tirely in  harmony  with  Jesus'  own  point  [\ 
of  view  when  Peter  later  declared  that  u 
God  by  the  resurrection  had  made  him  M 
both  Lord  and  Christ,  Acts  ii.  36.  Now  ^ 
in  this  sense  we  can  say  that  according 
to  our  Lord's  teaching  the  church  could 
not  begin  until  after  he  should  have  en- 

J 


146   The  Kmgdoin  and  the  Church 

tered  upon  the  exalted  stage  of  his 
Messiahship.  That  Jesus'  speaking  in 
terms  of  the  future  has  reference  to  this 
and  nothing  else,  may  also  be  gathered 
from  the  following  fact:  The  Evan- 
gelist tells  us  that  from  that  announce- 
ment concerning  the  church  onward, 
Jesus  began  to  show  unto  his  disciples 
that  he  must  go  unto  Jerusalem,  and 
suffer  many  things  of  the  elders  and 
chief  priests  and  scribes,  and  be  killed, 
and   the    third  day   be   raised  up,  Matt. 

^  xvi.  21.  Plainly  then  in  his  mind  there 
was  a  connection  between  the  results 
of    his  suffering   and  the  origin   of  the 

[  church. 

So  far  we  have  considered  our  Lord's 
words  exclusively  in  their  reference  to 
the  church  and  not  inquired  into  their 
bearing  upon  the  doctrine  of  the  king- 
dom. We  now  observe,  that  the  church, 
here  for  the  first  time  formally  intro- 
duced, is  most  closely  related  to  the  king- 
dom, which  had  hitherto  occupied  the 


The  Church  147 

foremost  place  in  Jesus'  teaching.  For 
immediately  after  the  declaration  con- 
cerning the  building  of  the  church,  our 
Lord  continues  to  say  unto  Peter  :  "  I 
will  give  unto  thee  the  keys  of  the  king- 
dom of  heaven  ;  and  whatsoever  thou 
shalt  bind  on  earth  shall  be  bound  in 
heaven  ;  and  whatsoever  thou  shalt  loose 
on  earth  shall  be  loosed  in  heaven,"  vs. 
19.  It  would  not  be  impossible,  of 
course,  to  give  a  plausible  interpretation 
of  this  connection  on  the  view,  that  the 
church  and  the  kingdom  are  separate 
things.  Understanding  the  kingdom  as 
the  final  kingdom,  and  the  power  of  the 
keys  as  the  power  to  give  or  deny  en- 
trance, the  sense  might  be  that  to  Peter, 
as  the  foundation  of  the  church,  and 
therefore  to  the  church,  had  been  given 
the  power  in  some  way  or  other  to  open 
or  shut  the  gates  of  the  heavenly  king- 
dom. On  this  view  the  church  would 
be  distinct  from  the  kingdom  as  here 
spoken  of,  would  indeed  stand  related  to 


148   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

it  as  a  gate-keeper  stands  to  a  house. 
This  is,  however,  scarcely  a  possible  ex- 
egesis so  far  as  the  words  of  the  second 
declaration  themselves  are  concerned. 
The  binding  and  loosing  do  not  refer  to 
heaven  itself,  as  if  heaven  were  shut  or 
opened,  but  refer  to  certain  things  lying 
within  the  sphere  of  heaven,  and  not  of 
heaven  alone  but  of  earth  likewise. 

The  figure  of  binding  and  loosing  will 
have  to  be  understood  in  a  different 
sense.  We  have  the  choice  between  in- 
terpreting it  of  the  binding  and  loosing 
of  sin,  i.  e.  the  imputation  and  forgive- 
ness of  sin,  and  interpreting  it  as  an  in- 
stance of  the  common  Jewish  parlance 
which  employed  **  to  bind  "  in  the  sense 
of  **  to  forbid,"  **  to  loose  "  in  the  sense 
of  **  to  allow."  The  former  might 
seem  to  be  favored  by  Matt,  xviii.  18, 
where  the  same  expressions  occur  and 
the  connection  leads  us  to  think  of  the 
process  of  church  discipline.  In  Matt, 
xvi,  on  the  other  hand,  there  is  nothing 


The  Church  149 

to  indicate  that  the  figure  has  this  re- 
stricted sense,  on  the  contrary,  everything 
points  to  the  most  generalizing  inter- 
pretation that  can  be  put  upon  it.  The 
keys  spoken  of  are  in  all  probability  not 
the  keys  of  the  outer  door,  but  the  keys 
pertaining  to  the  entire  house,  the  keys 
not  of  the  gate-keeper,  but  of  the  house- 
steward,  and  therefore  symbolize  the  ad- 
ministration of  the  affairs  of  the  house  in 
general,  cf.  Isa.  xxii.  22 ;  Rev.  iii.  7. 
But,  whichever  of  these  two  last  men- 
tioned views  we  may  adopt,  in  either 
case  the  kingdom  of  heaven  appears  as 
something  existing,  in  part  at  least,  on 
earth.  Peter  receives  the  keys  of  the 
kingdom  to  bind  or  loose  on  earth. 
What  he  does  in  the  administration  of 
the  kingdom  here  below  will  be  recog- 
nized in  heaven.  Now  this  promise^ 
immediately  following  the  declaration 
concerning  Peter  as  the  foundation  rock 
of  the  church,  it  becomes  necessary  to 
assume  that   in    Jesus'   view  these  two 


150   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

are  identified.  The  force  of  this  will  be 
felt  by  observing  that  in  the  two  state- 
ments made  the  figure  is  essentially  the 
same,  viz.,  that  of  the  house.  First  the 
house  is  represented  as  in  process  of  build- 
ing, and  Peter  as  the  foundation,  then  the 
same  house  appears  as  completed  and 
Peter  as  invested  with  the  keys  for  ad- 
ministering its  affairs.  It  is  plainly  ex- 
cluded that  the  house  should  mean  one 
thing  in  the  first  statement  and  another  in 
the  second.  It  must  be  possible,  this 
much  we  may  confidently  affirm,  to  call 
the  church  the  kingdom.  It  is  another 
question,  to  which  we  shall  presently  re- 
vert, whether  the  kingdom  can  under  all 
circumstances  be  identified  with  the 
Ichurch. 

The  kingdom  as  the  church  bears  the 
features  of  a  community  of  men.  It  ap- 
pears as  a  house.  This  character  be- 
longed to  the  Old  Testament  church  for 
which  that  of  Jesus  is  substituted,  it  also 
finds  expression  in  the  very  name  ecclesia. 


The  Church  151 

which  designates  the  assembly  of  free 
citizens  called  together  to  deliberate  and 
take  action  in  matters  pertaining  to  the 
commonwealth.  There  are  traces  in 
Jesus'  earlier  teaching  of  his  having 
viewed  the  kingdom  under  this  aspect  as 
an  organism  of  men,  although  the  rep- 
resentation is  by  no  means  prominent. 
Sayings  like  Matt.  xx.  25  ;  Mk.  ix.  35 ; 
Lk.  XX.  25,  at  least  suggest  the  idea  of 
the  kingdom  as  a  society  based  on  a  totally 
different  principle  from  that  governing 
the  kingdoms  of  this  world.  In  point 
of  fact,  Jesus  gathered  around  himself  a 
company  of  disciples,  and  it  is  plausible 
to  assume  that  he  found  in  their  mutual 
association  the  beginning  of  what  the 
kingdom  of  God  was  from  its  very  na- 
ture intended  to  be.  The  two  parables 
of  the  wheat  and  the  tares  and  of  the 
fish-net  equally  imply  the  thought  that 
the  kingdom  is  an  aggregate  of  men, 
though  their  point  does  not  lie  in  this 
thought  as  such,  but  in  the  inevitable  in- 


152   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

termingling  of  the  good  and  bad  until 
the  end.  The  nearest  approach  to  the 
later  declaration  about  the  church  occurs 
in  the  expression  ''his  kingdom"  of 
Matt.  xiii.  41.  This  *'  kingdom  of  the 
Son  of  man"  agrees  with  the  **  church 
of  Jesus,"  in  that  both  phrases  make  the 
kingdom  a  body  of  men  placed  under  the 
Messiah  as  their  ruler. 
^  From  the  foregoing  it  appears,  that,  if 
the  church  represents  an  advance  be- 
yond the  internal,  invisible  kingdom, 
v^hich  had  hitherto  figured  so  largely  in 
our  Lord's  teaching,  the  advance  must 
be  sought  in  something  else  than  the 
mere  fact  of  its  being  a  body  of  disciples. 
The  advance  lies  in  two  points.  In  the 
first  place,  the  body  of  disciples  pre- 
viously existing  must  now  take  the  place 
of  the  Old  Testament  church  and  there- 
fore receive  some  form  of  external  or- 
ganization. This  the  kingdom  had  not 
hitherto  possessed.  It  had  been  in- 
ternal and  invisible  not  merely  in  its  es- 


The  Church  153 

sence,  but  to  this  essence  there  had 
been  lacking  the  outward  embodiment. 
Jesus  now  in  speaking  of  the  house  and 
the  keys  of  the  house,  of  binding  and 
loosing  on  earth,  and  of  church  discipline, 
makes  provision  for  this.  In  the  second 
place,  our  Lord  gives  to  understand  that 
the  new  stage  upon  which  his  Messiah- 
ship  is  now  about  to  enter,  will  bring 
to  the  kingdom  a  new  influx  of  super- 
natural power  and  thus  make  out  of  it, 
not  only  externally  but  also  internally, 
that  new  thing  which  he  calls  his  church. 
It  is  possible  to  find  this  referred  to  in 
the  words  about  the  gates  of  Hades, 
which  immediately  follow  the  Lord's 
declaration  that  he  will  build  his  church. 
According  to  some,  these  words  imply 
a  conflict  between  Hades  as  the  realm 
of  death  and  the  church  as  the  sphere  of 
life.  They  then  would  mean  that  death 
will  not  be  able  to  conquer  the  church, 
or  that  the  church  will  be  able  to  con- 
quer   death,   and   the   ground   for    this 


154   T^^^  Kmgdorn  and  the  Church 

promise  would  be  that  Jesus  will  soon 
win  a  victory  over  death  and  fill  his 
church  with  unconquerable  life,  Rev.  i. 
18.  Probably,  however,  the  correct  ren- 
dering is  **  the  gates  of  Hades  shall  not 
surpass  it."  The  gates  of  Hades  seem 
to  have  been  a  figure  for  the  highest 
conceivable  strength,  because  no  one  can 
break  through  them.  On  this  rendering 
our  Lord  simply  means  to  say  that  the 
church  will  not  be  excelled  in  strength 
by  the  strongest  that  is  known ;  the  fig- 
ure is  a  further  elaboration  of  the  idea 
that  the  church  is  built  upon  a  rock. 
There  are,  however,  other  sayings  be- 
longing to  the  same  closing  period  of 
our  Lord's  ministry,  in  which  he  predicts 
the  coming  of  the  kingdom  with  a  new, 
previously  unknown  power.  In  Matt, 
xvi.  28 ;  Mk.  ix.  1 ;  Lk.  ix.  27 ;  Matt, 
xxvi.  64 ;  Mk.  xiv.  62 ;  Lk.  xxii.  69, 
Jesus  speaks  of  a  coming  of  the  Son  of 
man  in  his  kingdom,  of  a  coming  of  the 
kingdom  of    God   with   power,  which 


The  Church  155 

will  take  place  in  the  near  future,  so  that 
some  of  the  people  then  living  will  wit- 
ness it.  A  common  way  of  interpreting  ^-^ 
these  sayings  is  to  refer  them  to  the  final  \ 
coming  of  the  kingdom  at  the  end  of  the 
world.  Those,  however,  who  adopt  this 
view,  must  assume  that  our  Lord  was 
mistaken  as  to  the  nearness  of  the  event  in 
question  and  hence  give  up  the  infalli- 
bility of  his  teaching.  -^ 
Another  exegesis  is  quite  possible. 
We  can  interpret  these  sayings  of  the 
coming  of  the  kingdom  in  the  church. 
The  strong  terms  in  which  they  are 
clothed  do  not  absolutely  forbid  this. 
It  must  be  acknowledged  that  these 
terms  resemble  the  language  in  which 
elsewhere  the  final  coming  of  the  king- 
dom is  spoken  of.  It  is  a  coming  of  the 
kingdom  with  power,  a  coming  of  Jesus 
in  his  kingdom,  even  a  coming  of  Jesus 
with  the  clouds  of  heaven.  But  these 
expressions  become  more  easily  explain- 
able, if  we  endeavor  to  realize  what  the 


156    The  Kmgdom  and  the  Church 

church  in  her  first  appearance  was  to  be, 
and  how  the  humediate  future  presented 
itself  to  Jesus  from  his  own  personal 
point  of  view.  In  the  early  church 
there  were  to  be  many  extraordinary 
manifestations  of  the  Spirit's  power,  so 
extraordinary  indeed  as  to  anticipate  in 
some  respects  the  phenomena  that  will 
be  observed  at  the  end  of  the  world. 
And,  even  apart  from  this,  the  presence 
of  the  Spirit  in  the  church  in  its  more 
ordinary  form  of  operation  is  something 
sufficiently  marvelous  and  stupendous  to 
justify  the  strong  terms  employed.  The 
church  actually  has  within  herself  the 
powers  of  the  world  to  come.  She  is 
more  than  the  immanent  kingdom  as  it 
existed  before  Jesus'  exaltation.  She 
forms  an  intermediate  link  between  the 
present  life  and  the  life  of  eternity. 
Here  we  can  best  observe  how  thoroughly 
supernaturalistic  our  Lord's  conception 
of  the  church-form  of  the  kingdom  is. 
And  our  Lord  looked  upon  the  appear- 


The  Church  157 

ance  of  this  church  from  a  point  of  view- 
that  was  pecuHarly  his  own.     He  was  to 
be  its  Lord  and    King.      Now   to  him 
there  was  not    that   sharp    division    be- 
tween the  church-kingdom  and  the  final 
kingdom  which  there  is  for  us  who  live  on , 
earth.    For  him  the  consummation  of  the' 
kingdom  in  which  all  is  fulfilled  began 
with  his  resurrection  and  ascension.     It 
is  therefore  not  unnatural  that  he  should 
speak  of  this  approaching  state  in  terms, . 
which,  in  themselves  considered,  might 
make  us  think  of  the  final  coming  of  the 
kingdom. 

Besides  these  passages  we  have  the 
statement  of  Matt,  xviii.  20,  in  which 
our  Lord  promises  to  be  present  in  the 
midst  of  his  disciples  in  a  peculiar  man- 
ner, and  which  throws  light  upon  the 
idea  of  a  coming  of  his  which  shall  pre- 
cede the  final  coming.  But  especially 
do  the  Saviour's  last  discourses  preserved 
for  us  in  the  Gospel  according  to  John 
afford     us    help    in    apprehending    his 


O-x 


^ 


158   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

meaning  on  this  point.  Here  he  plainly 
represents  himself  as  coming  to  the  dis- 
ciples in  the  Spirit,  and  that  in  a  way 
quite  distinct  from  the  manner  in  which 
he  will  come  at  the  end  of  the  world. 
It  is  a  coming  which  the  disciples  will 
witness,  whilst  to  others  he  will  not  re- 
veal himself.  It  cannot  be  said  to  refer 
to  the  bodily  appearances  of  Jesus  after 
the  resurrection,  for  it  is  intended  to  re- 
sult in  an  abiding  presence.  Here,  there- 
fore, we  have  something  quite  analogous 
to  the  Synoptical  statements  previously 
quoted,  the  only  difference  being  that 
the  conception  of  the  kingdom  itself  is 
wanting  here  as  elsewhere  in  John, 
r  From  what  has  been  said  it  appears 
that  every  view  which  would  keep  the 
kingdom  and  the  church  separate  as  two 
entirely  distinct  spheres  is  not  in  harmony 
with  the  trend  of  our  Lord's  teaching. 
The  church  is  a  form  which  the  kingdom 
assumes  in  result  of  the  new  stage  upon 
which  the  Messiahship  of  Jesus  enters 


The  Church  159 

with  his  death  and  resurrection.  So  far 
as  extent  of  membership  is  concerned, 
Jesus  plainly  leads  us  to  identify  the  in- 
visible church  and  the  kingdom.  It  is 
impossible  to  be  in  the  one  without  being 
in  the  other.  We  have  our  Lord's  ex- 
plicit declaration  in  Jno.  iii.  3,  5,  to  the 
effect  that  nothing  less  than  the  new 
birth  can  enable  man  to  see  the  kingdom 
or  enter  into  it.  The  kingdom,  there- 
fore, as  truly  as  the  invisible  church  is 
constituted  by  the  regenerate  ;  the  re- 
generate alone  experience  in  themselves 
its  power,  cultivate  its  righteousness, 
enjoy  its  blessings.  It  is,  of  course,  quite 
possible,  while  recognizing  this  identity 
of  extent,  to  make  distinctions  as  to  the 
point  of  view  from  which  the  regenerate 
are  called  the  kingdom  and  the  church. 
Various  attempts  in  this  direction  have 
been  made.  It  may  be  said  that  the 
kingdom  designates  believers  in  their  re- 
lation to  God  as  ruler,  the  church  be- 
lievers  in  their   separateness    from    the 


1 60   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

world  and  their  organic  union  with  one 
another.  Or,  that  the  church  designates 
beHevers  in  their  attitude  of  worship  to- 
wards God,  the  kingdom,  beHevers  in 
their  ethical  activities  towards  one  an- 
other. Or  again,  that  the  church  desig- 
nates the  people  of  God  from  the  point 
of  view  of  their  calling  to  be  God's  in- 
strument in  preparing  the  way  for  and 
introducing  the  ideal  order  of  things,  the 
kingdom,  the  same  people  of  God  so  far 
as  they  possess  the  ideal  order  in  princi- 
ple realized  among  themselves.  These 
and  similar  distinctions  have  their  doc- 
trinal usefulness  and  are  unobjectionable, 
so  long  as  they  do  not  obscure  the  fact 
that  the  kingdom,  as  well  as  the  church,  is 
circumscribed  by  the  line  of  regenera- 
tion, and  that  the  invisible  church  itself 
is  that  which  determines  its  inner  es- 
sence, its  relation  to  God  and  Christ,  a 
true  kingdom,  since  it  consists  of  those 
over  whom  the  Messiah  rules  as  the  rep- 
.  resentative  of  God. 


Tlie  CJittrch  i6i 

But  what  about  the  relation  of  the 
visible  church  to  the  kingdom  ?  Here 
again  we  must  first  of  all  insist  upon  it, 
that  our  Lord  looked  upon  the  visible 
church  as  a  veritable  embodiment  of  his 
kingdom.  Precisely  because  the  invisible 
church  realizes  the  kingship  of  God,  the 
visible  church  must  likewise  partake  of 
this  character.  We  have  seen  that  the 
power  of  binding  and  loosing  given  to 
the  church  is  described  under  the  figure 
of  the  keys  of  the  kingdom  of  heaven. 
Our  Lord  in  conferring  this  power  acts 
in  the  capacity  of  King  over  the  visible 
church.  In  Matt.  xiii.  41  the  kingdom 
of  the  Son  of  man,  out  of  which  the  an- 
gels in  the  last  day  will  remove  all  things 
that  cause  stumbling  and  them  that  do 
iniquity,  is  nothing  else  but  the  visible 
church.  The  visible  church  is  con- 
stituted by  the  enthronement  of  Christ 
as  the  King  of  glory.  Out  of  the  fulness 
of  his  royal  authority  he  gave  immediately 
before  ascending  the  great  commission 

K 


1 62   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

to  preach  the  gospel  and  disciple  the 
nations  and  instituted  the  sacrament  of 
baptism.  We  must  say,  therefore,  that 
the  kingdom-forces  which  are  at  work, 
the  kingdom-Ufe  which  exists  in  the  in- 
visible sphere,  find  expression  in  the 
kingdom-organism  of  the  visible  church. 
That  Christ  is  King  in  this  church  and 
all  authority  exercised  within  any  church- 
body  derives  from  him  is  an  important 
principle  of  church  government,  which 
those  who  endeavor  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  kingdom  of  God  and  the  visible 
church  do  not  always  sufficiently  keep  in 
Imind. 

From  this,  however,  it  does  not  neces- 
sarily follow,  that  the  visible  church  is 
the  only  outward  expression  of  the  in- 
visible kingdom.  Undoubtedly  the 
kingship  of  God,  as  his  recognized  and 
applied  supremacy,  is  intended  to  pervade 
and  control  the  whole  of  human  life  in 
all  its  forms  of  existence.  This  the  par- 
able of  the  leaven  plainly  teaches.     These 


The  Church  163 

various  forms  of  human  life  have  each 
their  own  sphere  in   which  they  work 
and    embody    themselves.       There    is    a" 
sphere  of  science,  a  sphere  of  art,  a  sphere 
of  the   family  and  of  the  state,  a  sphere 
of  commerce  and  industry.     Whenever  , 
one  of   these  spheres  comes  under  the 
controlling  influence  of  the  principle  of 
the  divine  supremacy  and  glory,  and  this 
outwardly   reveals   itself,   there   we   can 
truly  say  that  the  kingdom  of  God  hasl 
become  manifest.     Now  our  Lord  in  his 
teaching  seldom  makes  explicit  reference 
to  these  things.     He  contented  himself 
with  laying  down  the  great  religious  and 
moral  principles  which  ought  to  govern 
the  life  of  man  in  every  sphere.     Their 
detailed  application  it  was  not  his  work 
to  show.     But  we  may  safely  affirm  two 
things.     On  the  one  hand,  his  doctrinei 
of  the  kingdom  was  founded  on  such  a  <- 
profound  and    broad    conviction   of  the 
absolute  supremacy  of  God  in  all  things, 
that  he  could  not  but  look  upon  every 


164   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

normal  and  legitimate  province  of  human 
life  as  intended  to  form  part  of  God's 
kingdom.  On  the  other  hand,  it  was 
not  his  intention  that  this  result  should 
be  reached  by  making  human  life  in  all 
its  spheres  subject  to  the  visible  church. 
It  is  true  that  under  the  Old  Covenant 
something  of  this  nature  had  existed.  In 
the  theocracy  the  church  had  domi- 
nated the  life  of  the  people  of  God  in  all 
its  extent.  State  and  church  were  in  it 
most  intimately  united.  Jesus  on  more 
than  one  occasion  gave  to  understand 
that  in  this  respect  at  least  the  conditions 
of  the  Old  Covenant  were  not  to  be  per- 
petuated, cf.  Matt.  xxii.  21  ;  Jno.  xviii. 
36  ;  xix.  11.  And  what  is  true  of  the 
relation  between  church  and  state,  may 
also  be  applied  to  the  relation  be- 
tween the  visible  church  and  the  various 
other  branches  into  which  the  organic 
life  of  humanity  divides  itself.  It  is  en- 
tirely in  accordance  with  the  spirit  of 
Jesus'  teaching  to  subsume  these  under 


The  Church  165 

the  kingdom  of  God  and  to  co-ordinate 
them  with  the  visible  church  as  true 
manifestations  of  this  kingdom,  in  so  far 
as  the  divine  sovereignty  and  glory  have 
become  in  them  the  controlling  prin- 
ciple. But  it  must  always  be  remenv 
bered,  that  the  latter  can  only  happen, 
when  all  these,  no  less  than  the  visible 
church,  stand  in  living  contact  with  the 
forces  of  regeneration  supernaturally  in- 
troduced into  the  world  by  the  Spirit  of 
God.  While  it  is  proper  to  separate  be- 
tween the  visible  church  and  such  things 
as  the  Christian  state,  Christian  art.  Chris- 
tian science,  etc.,  these  things,  if  they 
truly  belong  to  the  kingdom  of  God, 
grow  up  out  of  the  regenerated  life  of 
the  invisible  church.  J 

As  already  stated,  this  is  a  subject  on 
which  our  Lord's  teaching  does  not  bring 
any  explicit  disclosures  and  which  can 
only  be  treated  by  way  of  inference.  It 
has  sometimes  been  thought  that  the 
parables  of  the  wheat  and  the  tares  and 


1 66   The  Kmgdoni  and  the  Church 

of  the  fish-net  contain  an  explicit  declara- 
tion concerning  the  kingdom  as  a  wider 
sphere  than  the  church.  This  is  assumed, 
because  these  parables  imply  that  in  the 
kingdom  the  good  and  the  evil  are  to  be 
allowed  to  intermingle,  which  cannot  be 
the  rule  in  the  church,  as  the  obligation 
to  exercise  church  discipline  plainly 
shows.  Historically  interpreted,  how- 
ever, these  parables  do  not  warrant  such 
an  inference.  The  current  doctrine  of 
the  kingdom,  shared  up  to  that  point  by 
the  disciples,  assumed  that  the  very  first 
act  of  God  at  the  coming  of  the  kingdom 
would  consist  in  an  absolute  and  eternal 
separation  between  the  good  and  the 
evil.  This  assumption  was  natural  so 
long  as  no  distinction  between  the  two 
stages  of  the  history  of  the  kingdom  had 
been  made.  When  Jesus  introduced 
this  distinction,  it  became  necessary  to 
emphasize  that  not  everything  which  was 
true  of  the  final  appearance  of  the  king- 
dom could  therefore  also  be  predicated 


The  Church  167 

of  its  present,  invisible  mode  of  coming. 
As  a  warning  to  this  effect  these  two 
parables  must  be  interpreted. 

Our  Lord  desires  to  make  plain  that, 
while  the  kingdom  is  now  actually  com- 
ing, a  complete  separation  between  the 
evil  and  the  good  cannot  be  effected  until 
the  end  of  the  world.  During  the  pres-^ 
ent  age  the  kingdom  must  partake  of  the 
limitations  and  imperfections  to  which  a 
sinful  environment  exposes  it.  Of  the 
church,  as  the  externally  organized  king- 
dom, this  is  eminently  true.  It  exists 
upon  the  field  of  the  world.  At  no  time 
until  the  very  last  will  it  be  entirely  puri- 
fied of  all  evil  elements.  This  truth, 
however,  in  no  wise  interferes  with  the 
possibility  nor  absolves  from  the  duty  of 
church  discipline.  The  process  to  which 
our  Lord  refers  in  Matt,  xviii.  17  is  not 
intended  for  effecting  an  absolute  sepa- 
ration between  the  good  and  the  evil,  and 
thus  rendering  the  church  as  ideally  pure 
as  she  will  be  in  the  final  state  of  the 


1 68    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

kingdom.  Its  proximate  end  is  the  self- 
preservation  of  the  church  in  that  state 
of  holiness  which  befits  her  profession, 
and  would  be  destroyed  by  the  exercise 
of  religious  fellowship  with  such  as  re- 
main unrepentant  in  the  face  of  open  sin. 
Its  ulterior  end  is  remedial,  consisting  in 
the  salvation  of  the  sinner  thus  left  to 
himself.  Both  ends  can  be  pursued 
without  forgetting  or  denying  the  lesson 
taught  in  the  parables,  that  it  is  not  given 
to  men  to  judge  the  heart,  and  that  God 
alone  in  the  day  of  judgment  will  infal- 
libly remove  from  the  church  all  elements 
which,  while  simulating  its  outward  ap- 
pearance, do  not  belong  to  it  in  the  inner 
[spiritual  reality. 


CHAPTER  X 


TJie  Entrance  into   t/ie   Kingdom 


<b 


Repentance  and  Faith 


2 


¥~^ROM  the  beginning  our  Lord's 
t^  announcement  of  the  nearness  of 
the  kingdom  was  linked  with  the 
demand  for  repentance  and  faith,  Matt. 
iv.  17  ;  Mk.  i.  15.  This  was  not  acci- 
dental, but  an  inevitable  result  from  the 
nature  of  the  kingdom.  Repentance 
and  faith  are  simply  the  two  main  aspects 
of  the  kingdom,  righteousness  and  the 
saving  grace  of  God,  translated  into  terms 
of  subjective  human  experience.  Be- 
cause the  kingdom  is  in  its  very  essence  a 

169 


ic, 


lyo  The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

kingdom  of  righteousness,  therefore  it  is 
impossible  for  any  one  to  be  truly  in  it 
without  having  previously  repented. 
Because  the  kingdom  intrinsically  con- 
sists in  the  exercise  of  the  divine  saving 
grace  and  power,  therefore  it  requires  in 
every  one  who  is  to  share  its  benefits 
that  responsive  and  receptive  attitude 
towards  these  divine  attributes  which  is 

[called  faith. 

p  The  relation  of  repentance  to  the  king- 
dom is  strikingly  defined  in  Matthew's 
version  of  the  parable  of  the  marriage 
feast,  xxii.  1-14.  Comparing  this  with 
the  form  in  which  our  Lord  uttered  the 
same  parable  on  a  previous  occasion,  ac- 
cording to  Lk.  xiv.  16-24,  we  find 
among  other  changes  the  significant 
touch  added  of  the  man  without  a  wed- 
ding garment.  It  is  plain  from  the  na- 
ture of  the  invitation,  that  what  this 
wedding  garment  stands  for  is  not  to  be 
regarded  as  in  any  way  entitling  the 
bearer  to  a  place  at  the  feast.      Those 


Repentance  and  Faith      171 

who  come  are  taken  from  the  highways 
and  hedges,  from  the  streets  and  lanes  of 
the  city  and  compelled  to  enter.  They 
are  received,  therefore,  without  merit  on 
their  part,  on  the  principle  of  free  grace. 
Nevertheless,  when  once  within,  it  is  in- 
dispensable that  they  should  wear  the 
garment  appropriate  to  the  occasion. 
Thus  repentance  and  righteousness, 
while  they  do  not  in  any  meritorious 
sense  earn  the  benefits  of  the  kingdom, 
are  yet  indispensable  concomitants  of  the 
state  in  which  alone  these  benefits  can 
be  received.  J 

Our  Lord's  idea  of   repentance  is  as^ 
profound  and  comprehensive  as  his  con- 
ception of  righteousness.     Of  the  three 
words  that   are  used  in  the  Greek  Gos- 
pels   to    describe    the    process,  one  em- 
phasizes  the    emotional  element  of   re- 
gret, sorrow  over  the  past  evil  course  of  '' 
life,  /xera/ieXo/xat,    Matt.   xxi.    29-32 ;    a 
second  expresses  reversal  of   the  entire  ' 
mental  attitude,  fieTavoew,  Matt.  xii.  41, 


172   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Lk.  xi.  32 ;  xv.  7, 10 ;  the  third  denotes 
a  change  in  the  direction  of  life,  one 
goal  being  substituted  for  another, 
eVto-T/ae^o/xat,  Matt.  xiii.  15  (and  par- 
allels) ;  Lk.  xvii.  4 ;  xxii.  32.  Repent- 
ance is  not  limited  to  any  single  faculty 
of  the  mind  :  it  engages  the  entire  man, 
intellect,  will  and  affections.  Nor  is  it 
confined  to  the  moral  sphere  of  life  in  the 
narrower  sense :  it  covers  man's  entire 
religious  as  well  as  his  moral  relation  to 
God.  Repentance  in  the  conception  of 
Jesus  is  wide  enough  to  include  faith. 
Matt.  xi.  20,  21.  Here  as  elsewhere, 
what  strikes  us  most  is  the  God-centered 
character  of  our  Lord's  teaching  on  the 
subject.  The  state  from  which  a  re- 
pentance must  take  place  is  condemned, 
because  it  is  radically  wrong  with  refer- 
ence to  God.  The  sin  of  the  prodigal 
has  for  its  central  feature  the  abandon- 
ment of  the  Father's  house.  The  sinful 
are  like  wandering  sheep,  like  lost  coins, 
representations  which    imply   a  detach- 


Repentance  and  Faith     173 

ment  of  the  spiritual  consciousness  from 
its  center  in  God.  J 

The  strongest  way  of  expressing  this* 
is  to  designate  the  state  of  man  without 
repentance  a  state  of  death,  Matt.  viii.  22  ; 
Lk.  XV.  24,  32.  And  Jesus  does  not  look 
upon  this  state  as  a  godless  state  in  the 
purely  negative  sense  of  the  word. 
Where  the  love  of  God  is  absent,  there 
an  idolatrous  love  of  the  world  and  of 
self  enters,  and  a  positively  offensive  and 
hostile  attitude  towards  God  results.  It 
is  very  significant  that  Jesus,  in  speaking 
of  the  two  masters,  does  not  say  that  to 
love  the  one  is  to  neglect  the  other,  or 
to  hold  to  the  one  is  to  renounce  the 
other,  but  employs  positive  terms  in  both 
clauses,  "  Either  he  will  hate  the  one  and 
love  the  other,  or  else  he  will  hold  to  the 
one  and  despise  the  other,"  Matt.  vi.  24. 
Man  is  so  necessarily  bound  to  God  in 
his  inmost  consciousness,  that  absolute ' 
indifference  or  neutrality  are  excluded^ 

In  the  crisis  of  repentance  the  offense 


174  The  Kingdom  and  the  Chttrch 

against  God  and  the  need  of  God  are  that 
upon  which  the  repenting  consciousness 
is  focused.  The  sorrow  of  true  repent- 
ance is  one  which  arises  from  conviction 
of  sin.  It  is  also  a  sorrow  after  God,  such 
as  proceeds  from  a  sense  of  spiritual  desti- 
tution. Both  principles  are  well  brought 
out  in  the  parable  of  the  prodigal  son,  the 
discourse  in  which  Jesus  has  so  marvel- 
ously  described  the  psychological  process 
of  repentance.  The  prodigal  *' comes 
to  himself."  Previously  he  had  been 
out  of  himself,  had  not  known  and  felt 
himself  in  the  simple  truth  of  his  funda- 
mental relation  to  God.  He  realizes 
that  he  perishes  with  hunger,  whilst  in 
his  Father's  house  there  is  bread  enough 
and  to  spare.  In  his  confession  the  of- 
fense against  God  is  significantly  placed 
before  that  against  the  human  father. 

Again,  in  the  new  life  which  follows  re- 
pentance the  absolute  supremacy  of  God 
is  the  controlling  principle.  He  who 
repents  turns  away  from  the  service  of 


Repentance  and  Faith      175 

mammon  and  self  to  the  service  of  God. 
Our  Lord  is  emphatic  in  insisting  upon 
this  absokite,  undivided  surrender  of  the 
soul  to  God  as  the  goal  of  all  true  re- 
pentance. Because  this  and  nothing  less 
is  the  goal,  he  urges  the  necessity  of  a 
constant  repetition  of  the  process.  Even 
to  his  followers  he  said  at  a  compara- 
tively late  stage  of  his  ministry,  *'  Ex- 
cept ye  turn  and  become  as  little  chil- 
dren, ye  shall  in  no  wise  enter  into  the 
kingdom  of  heaven,"  Matt,  xviii.  3. 
From  this  necessity  we  must  also  explain 
the  uncompromising  manner  in  which 
Jesus  requires  of  his  disciples  the  renun- 
ciation of  all  earthly  bonds  and  posses- 
sions which  would  dispute  God  his  su- 
preme sway  over  their  life.  Matt.  x.  39 ; 
xvi.  25 ;  Lk.  xiv.  25-35.  The  state- 
ments to  this  effect  are  not  meant  in  the 
sense  that  external  abandonment  of  these 
things  is  sufficient  or  even  required. 
The  idea  is  that  the  inward  attachment 
of  the  soul  to  them  as  the  highest  good 


176   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

must  be  in  principle  destroyed,  that  God 
may  take  the  place  hitherto  claimed  by 
them.  Within  the  kingdom  they  are 
entitled  to  affection  on  the  disciple's  part 
in  so  far  only  as  they  can  be  made  subor- 
dinate and  subservient  to  the  love  of 
God.  The  demand  for  sacrifice  always 
presupposes  that  v^hat  is  to  be  renounced 
forms  an  obstacle  to  that  absolute  devo- 
tion which  the  kingdom  of  God  re- 
quires, Mk.  ix.  43.  That  not  the  external 
possession  but  the  internal  entangle- 
ment of  the  heart  with  temporal  goods 
is  condemned,  Jesus  strikingly  indicates 
by  the  demand  **  to  hate"  one's  father 
and  mother  and  wife  and  children  and 
brethren  and  sisters,  yea  and  one's  own 
life  also.  The  energetic  determination 
of  the  will  to  forego  even  the  pleasures  of 
natural  affection,  where  they  come  in 
conflict  with  the  supreme  duty  of  the 
kingdom,  is  thus  described  and  the  word 
** hating"  chosen  on  purpose  to  express 
that  in  such  cases  an  internal  change  of 


Repentance  and  Faith       177 

mind  alone,  not  a  mere  external  act,  can 
make  man  fit  for  the  kingdom  of  God. 
Matt.  X.  37  gives  us  Jesus'  own  interpre- 
tation of  such  seemingly  harsh  sayings. 

Jesus  affirms  the  necessity  of  repent- 
ance for  all  men,  Mk.  vi.  12  ;  Lk.  xiii. 
3,  5  ;  xxiv.  47.  In  an  indirect  way  the 
universal  need  of  it  is  shown  by  his 
utterances  on  the  universality  and  per- 
vasiveness of  sin.  Even  to  the  disciples 
it  can  be  said  without  qualification,  "  If 
ye  then,  being  evil,  etc.,"  Matt.  vii.  11. 
None  is  good  save  one,  even  God,  Mk. 
x.  18.  It  is  true  Jesus  draws  a  distinc- 
tion between  ''righteous"  and  ''sin- 
ners," Matt.  ix.  13  ;  Mk.  ii.  17.  But 
the  context  shows  that  this  distinction  is 
drawn  from  the  point  of  view  of  the 
judgment  pronounced  by  men  on  them- 
selves, not  from  the  objective  standpoint 
of  Jesus'  own  knowledge  of  them. 
These  statements  were  made  in  answer 
to  the  charge  of  the  Pharisees  that  Jesus 
ate   with   publicans    and    sinners.     The 

L 


178   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Saviour  means  to  say  that,  if  their  com- 
parative estimiate  concerning  themselves 
and  these  degraded  people  be  correct, 
there  is  all  the  more  necessity  for  his 
associating  with  the  latter  in  order  to 
save  them.  Perhaps  the  reference  to 
the  ninety  and  nine  righteous  persons, 
which  need  no  repentance,  in  Lk.  xv. 
7,  10,  must  be  explained  on  the  same 
principle. 

The  connection  between  faith  and  the 
saving  grace  and  power  of  God  in  the 
kingdom  is  just  as  close  and  vital  as  that 
just  traced  between  repentance  and  right- 
eousness. It  is  a  striking  fact  that  in 
the  Synoptical  Gospels  nearly  the  whole 
of  our  Lord's  teaching  on  faith  attaches 
itself  to  the  performance  of  miracles. 
This  implies  that  the  miracles  were  emi- 
nently adapted  to  bring  out  the  inner 
essense  of  faith  and  to  reveal  the  true 
reason  for  its  necessity.  They  embody 
that  aspect  of  the  kingdom  to  which 
faith  is  the  subjective  counterpart.     Now 


Repentance  and  Faith      179 

the  miracles  almost  without  exception 
have  two  features  in  common.  In  the 
first  place,  they  are  transactions  where 
the  result  absolutely  and  exclusively  de- 
pends on  the  forth-putting  of  the  di- 
vine supernatural  power,  where  no  hu- 
man effort  could  possibly  contribute 
anything  towards  its  accomplishment. 
And  secondly,  the  miracles  are,  as  we 
have  seen,  healing  miracles  in  which 
the  gracious  love  of  God  offers  itself 
to  man  for  his  salvation.  Faith  is 
the  spiritual  attitude  called  for  by  this 
twofold  element  in  the  saving  work 
of  God.  It  is  the  recognition  of  the 
divine  power  and  grace,  not,  of  course, 
in  a  purely  intellectual  way,  but  prac- 
tically so  as  to  involve  not  only  convic- 
tion of  the  mind  but  to  carry  with  it 
also  the  movement  of  the  will  and  the 
affections.  How  faith  stands  related  to 
the  saving  power  of  God  is  most  clearly 
illustrated  in  the  narrative  Mk.  ix.  17-24. 
When  the   disciples  could  not  heal  the 


i8o   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

child  with  the  dumb  spirit  Jesus  ex- 
claimed, '' O  unbelieving  generation." 
The  father  says,  after  describing  the  se- 
verity of  the  case,  "  But  if  thou  canst  do 
anything,  have  compassion  on  us  and 
help  us."  To  this  Jesus  replies,  **  If 
thou  canst !  all  things  are  possible  to  him 
that  belie veth."  This  ascribes  to  faith 
something  that  can  be  affirmed  of  God 
alone,  viz.,  absolute  omnipotence.  Else- 
where also  this  principle  is  emphasized 
by  our  Lord,  Matt.  xxi.  21,  22  ;  Mk.  xi. 
22,  23  ;  Lk.  xvii.  6.  The  explanation 
lies  in  this  that  faith  is  nothing  else  than 
that  act  whereby  man  lays  hold  of,  ap- 
propriates for  himself  the  endless  power 
of  God.  If  faith  were  a  human  endeavor, 
something  working  by  its  own  inherent 
strength,  then  it  would  be  indeed  rea- 
sonable to  say  with  reference  to  the  one 
exercising  it,  ""  If  thou  canst."  On  the 
other  hand,  if  the  innermost  meaning  of 
faith  consist  precisely  in  this,  that  man 
with  an  utter   renunciation   of  his  own 


Repentance  and  Faith     i8i 

strength,  casts  himself  upon  the  strength 
of  God,  then  plainly  all  further  concern 
about  what  is  possible  or  impossible, 
every  '*  If  thou  canst,"  is  out  of  place. 
Hence  also  faith  is  not  a  quantitative 
matter,  as  it  w^ould  have  to  be,  were  it  a 
principle  of  human  endeavor  ;  faith  like 
a  grain  of  mustard  seed  will  accomplish 
the  greatest  conceivable  results,  because, 
small  though  it  be,  it  nevertheless,  pro- 
vided it  be  genuine  faith,  connects  man 
with  the  exhaustless  reservoir  of  divine 
omnipotence,  Lk.  xvii.  6. 

This  line  of  reasoning,  however,  is  not 
applicable  to  the  miracles  only.  The 
miracles  illustrate  the  saving  work  of 
God  in  general.  All  salvation  partakes, 
humanly  speaking,  of  the  nature  of  the 
impossible,  can  be  accomplished  by  God 
alone.  Jesus  answers  the  question  of 
the  disciples,  '*  Who  then  can  be  saved  ?" 
with  an  appeal  to  the  almighty  power  of 
God,  **  With  men  this  is  impossible,  but 
with  God  all  things  are  possible,"  Matt. 


1 82   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

xix.  25,  26.  All  genuine  saving  faith  is 
as  profoundly  conscious  of  its  utter  de- 
pendence on  God  for  deliverance  from 
sin  as  the  recipients  of  our  Lord's  mi- 
raculous cures  were  convinced  that  God 
alone  could  heal  their  bodies  from  dis- 
ease. 

But  faith  is  more  than  a  conviction 
regarding  the  necessity  and  sufficiency 
of  the  divine  power.  It  also  involves 
the  recognition  of  God's  willingness 
and  readiness  to  save,  is  a  practical  ap- 
propriation of  the  divine  grace.  Thus 
there  enters  into  it  an  element  of  trust. 
Jesus  never  encouraged  the  exercise  of 
faith  as  a  mere  external  belief  in  super- 
natural power.  The  performance  of  a 
sign  from  heaven,  which  men  might 
have  witnessed  without  such  trust  in 
God  or  himself,  he  persistently  refused. 
Where  there  existed  an  antecedent  hin- 
drance to  the  exercise  of  this  trust,  he 
would  not  even  perform  any  healing  mir- 
acles.    He,   who  truly  believes,  vividly 


Repentance  and  Faith      183 

realizes  that  God  is  loving,  merciful,  for- 
giving, glad  to  receive  sinners.  Faith 
transfers  to  God  what  human  parents  ex- 
perience in  themselves  with  reference  to 
their  own  children,  the  desire  to  help 
and  supply.  Matt.  vii.  7-11.  Not  to 
trust  would  be  to  ascribe  to  him  the  evil 
disposition  of  sinful  men  towards  one  an- 
other. This  reliance  of  faith  is  not  con- 
fined to  the  critical  moments  of  life,  it 
is  to  be  the  abiding,  characteristic  inner 
disposition  of  the  disciple  with  reference 
to  every  concern.  To  trust  God  for 
food  and  raiment  is  as  truly  the  mark 
of  the  disciple  in  the  kingdom  as  to  de- 
pend on  him  for  eternal  salvation.  Matt. 
vi.  30.  Faith  in  those  on  whom  the 
wonderful  cures  were  wrought  may  have 
manifested  itself  at  first  as  a  momentary 
act,  but  Jesus  frequently  called  the  atten- 
tion of  such  people  to  what  faith  had 
done  for  them,  thus  suggesting  that  this 
faith  could  be  made  fruitful  also  on  fu- 
ture occasions.     Of  the  disciples  he  ex- 


1 84   The  Kingdom  mid  the  Church 

plicitly  required  faith  as  an  abiding  dis- 
position of  trust.  When  in  the  storm 
they  came  to  him  saying,  ''  Save  Lord, 
we  perish,"  he  rebuked  them  because 
they  were  without  confidence  in  his 
presence  with  them  as  a  source  of  ab- 
sokite  safety. 

Being  in  its  very  essence  trust,  faith  nec- 
essarily rests  in  a  person.  It  is  not  con- 
fidence about  any  abstract  proposition, 
but  reliance  upon  a  personal  character 
and  disposition.  The  disciples  are  urged 
to  have  "faith  in  God,"  Mk.  xi.  22. 
But,  inasmuch  as  Jesus  is  the  revelation 
and  representative  of  God,  nay,  one 
with  God,  he  also  is  the  personal  object 
of  faith.  It  is  true,  in  the  Synoptical 
Gospels  this  is  explicitly  stated  in  one 
passage  only,  viz..  Matt,  xviii.  6,  **  These 
little  ones  that  believe  on  me."  But 
this  almost  entire  absence  of  the  formula 
is  easily  explained.  It  was  the  result  of 
Jesus'  method  of  not  directly  proclaiming 
at  first  his  own  position  in  the  kingdom, 


Repentance  and  Faith      185 

but  rather  of  allowing  it  to  be  gradually 
inferred  from  practical  experience.  It 
does  not  prove  the  assertion  of  some 
modern  writers,  that  in  the  gospel,  as 
Jesus  preached  it,  there  was  no  place  for 
his  own  person,  that  it  was  merely  a  gos- 
pel about  God.  Though  not  frequently 
in  so  many  words,  yet  in  acts  we  find 
our  Lord  seeking  to  elicit  and  cultivate  a 
personal  relationship  of  faith  between 
the  disciple  and  himself  and  in  himself 
with  God.  Conscious  of  being  the  Mes- 
siah, he  could  not  help  assigning  to  him- 
self a  place  in  the  gospel,  and  viewing 
himself  as  in  a  real  sense  the  object  of 
religious  trust.  This  appears  from  his 
saying  to  Peter  shortly  before  the  passion, 
"  Simon,  Simon,  behold  Satan  asked 
to  have  you,  that  he  might  sift  you  (no- 
tice the  plural  pronoun)  as  wheat :  but  I 
made  supplication  for  thee,  that  thy 
faith  fail  not."  Here  the  crisis  of  our 
Lord's  suffering  is  represented  as  the 
great  testing   crisis  of  true  discipleship. 


1 86   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Satan  will  in  it  sift  the  true  disciples 
from  the  false.  The  true  will  approve 
themselves  in  this,  that,  when  everything 
goes  against  Jesus,  their  faith  fails  not. 
And,  on  the  other  hand,  when  Peter's 
faith  begins  to  fail,  this  is  described  as  a  de- 
nial of  Jesus ;  faith,  therefore,  must  in- 
volve the  opposite  of  denial,  an  avowal,  a 
personal  bond  of  identification  between 
the  master  and  the  disciple,  Lk.  xxii.  31- 
34.  And  it  is  psychologically  inconceiv- 
able that  in  those  who  were  helped  by  the 
miracles  of  Jesus,  faith  should  not  have 
assumed  the  form  of  personal  trust  in  him 
as  the  instrument  of  the  saving  grace  and 
power  of  God.  Faith  in  God  and  faith 
in  Jesus  here  inevitably  coalesced. 

Faith  is  not  represented  by  our  Lord 
as  an  arbitrary  movement  of  the  mind, 
which  would  be  independent  of  the 
deeper-lying  dispositions  and  tendencies 
of  life.  Jesus  knows  of  antecedent  states 
of  heart  by  which  faith  and  unbelief 
are    determined.     The    unbelief  of  the 


Repentance  and  Faith      187 

Jews  he  explains  from  the  fact  of  their 
being  **  offended  "  in  him.  What  Jesus 
was  and  did  and  taught  stood  at  ahnost 
every  point  in  direct  antithesis  to  what 
they  expected  their  Messiah  to  be,  to  do 
and  to  teach.  But  these  expectations 
and  beliefs  of  the  Jews  were  deeply 
rooted  in  their  general  religious  state 
and  character :  their  unbelief,  therefore, 
resulted  from  the  fundamental  disposition 
of  their  hearts.  They  that  refuse  faith 
do  so,  because  they  are  an  evil  and  adul- 
terous generation.  If  they  were  what 
they  ought  to  be  and  had  not  broken 
the  pledges  of  their  covenant  mar- 
riage to  God,  if  their  attitude  towards 
God  were  normal,  they  would  believe 
on  him  whom  God  had  sent.  And  all 
this  is  true  likewise  of  faith.  In  its  ul- 
timate analysis  faith  is,  according  to  Jesus, 
a  divine  gift.  Faith  must  be  the  work 
of  God  in  man,  because  only  so  can  it 
be  in  harmony  with  itself  as  the  recog- 
nition that  we  owe  everything  to  God's 


1 88    The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

working  for  us  and  in  us.  It  is  the  Fa- 
ther who  reveals  to  the  babes  what  he 
hides  from  the  wise  and  understanding, 
Matt.  xi.  25.  Jesus  prays  for  Peter,  that 
his  faith  fail  not :  that  which  we  pray  for 
we  affirm  to  be  dependent  on  the  opera- 
tion of  God.  When  Peter  makes  his 
confession,  **  Thou  art  the  Christ,  the 
Son  of  the  living  God,"  Jesus  declares 
that  not  flesh  and  blood  has  revealed  this 
unto  him,  but  the  Father  in  heaven. 

In  the  discourses  of  the  Gospel  accord- 
ing to  John,  several  important  points  of 
our  Lord's  doctrine  of  faith  are  brought 
out  with  greater  clearness  and  explicitness 
than  in  the  Synoptical  statements.  Faith 
here  is  from  beginning  to  end  faith  in 
Jesus,  and  not  merely  in  Jesus  as  the  in- 
strument of  God,  but  as  the  image  and 
incarnation  of  God,  so  that  to  believe  in 
him  is  to  believe  in  God.  Consequently 
this  faith  in  Jesus  is  also  more  clearly 
represented  as  a  comprehensive  faith  in 
him  as  a  Saviour  for  life  and  death,  for 


Repentance  mid  Faith      189 

time  and  eternity,  and  not  merely  faith 
in  Jesus  as  helper  in  a  concrete  case  of  dis- 
tress. Still  further  our  Lord  here  by 
anticipation  describes  how  faith  will  stand 
related  to  his  atonement  and  resurrection, 
how  it  will  become  faith  in  the  heavenly, 
glorified  Christ,  J  no.  iii.  14  ;  vi.  51  ;  vii. 
29,  38;  xi.  25;  xv.  7,  16;  xvi.  23,  24. 
Because  the  testimony  of  Jesus  concern- 
ing himself  in  this  Gospel  is  so  much 
fuller  and  richer,  faith  is  more  closely 
identified  with  knowledge,  Jno.  vi.  69  ; 
viii.  24,  28  ;  xiv.  9,  10,  20  ;  xvi.  30.  We 
have  already  seen  above,  however,  that 
knowledge  here  means  far  more  than 
intellectual  cognition.  It  implies  prac- 
tical acquaintance,  confidence  and  love, 
Jno.  X.  4,  14,  15  ;  xvii.  25,  26.  Finally, 
our  Lord  is  here  much  more  explicit  on 
the  causes  of  faith  and  unbelief  than  in 
the  more  popular  Synoptical  teaching. 
Faith  and  unbelief  are  experimental  states 
and  acts  in  which  the  whole  spiritual 
condition   of   the   individual    comes    to 


190  The  Kingdom  mid  the  Church 

light.  Not  to  believe  is  the  great  sin, 
because  the  deep  inherent  sinfulness  of 
the  heart  displays  in  this  sin  its  true 
character  of  hostility  towards  God,  Jno. 
ix.  41 ;  XV.  22,  24 ;  xvi.  8,  9.  In  the 
,  same  manner  faith  is  the  outcome  of  an 
inward  condition  of  the  heart.  This  our 
Lord  describes  as  a  doing  of  the  truth,  a 
working  in  God,  a  being  of  the  truth,  a 
having  of  the  love  of  God  in  one's  self, 
a  hearing  from  the  Father,  a  learning 
from  him,  a  being  drawn  by  the  Father,  a 
having  been  given  by  the  Father  to  the  Son, 
in  virtue  of  which  believers  are  Jesus' 
own  sheep  even  before  he  manifests  him- 
self to  them,  Jno.  iii.  21  ;  v.  42  ;  vi.  44,  45  ; 
xvii.  11  ;  xviii.  37.  In  all  these  respects 
the  teaching  of  Jesus  here  recorded  is  not 
in  contradiction  with,  but  simply  the 
legitimate  expansion  of  that  delivered  to 
us  in  the  three  other  Gospels. 


CHAPTER  XI 

Recapitulation 

TT  'T  AVING  reached  the   end    of   our 
/   /    discussion  we  may  now  endeavor 
briefly    to   formulate  the  impor- 
tant principles  embodied  in  our  Lord's 
teaching  on   the  Kingdom  of   God  and 
the  Church.     They  are  the    following: 
In  the  first  place,   the  kingdom-con- 
ception involves  the  historic  unity  of  Jesus* 
work  with  the  Old   Testament  work  of 
God.     These  two   constitute   one  body 
of   supernatural  revelation  and  redemp- 
tion. 

Secondly,  the  doctrine  of  the  kingdom 
stands  for  the  principle  that  the  Chris- 

191 


192   TJie  Kingdom  and  the  CJutrch 

tian  religion  is  not  a  mere  matter  of  sub- 
jective ideas  or  experiences,  but  is  related 
to  a  great  system  of  objective,  supernatural 
facts  and  transactions.  The  kingdom 
means  the  renewal  of  the  world  through 
the  introduction  of  supernatural  forces. 

Thirdly,  the  kingdom-idea  is  the 
clearest  expression  of  the  principle  that 
in  the  sphere  of  objective  reality,  as  well 
as  in  the  sphere  of  human  consciousness, 
everything  is  subservient  to  the  glory  of  God. 
In  this  respect  the  kingdom  is  the  most 
profoundly  religious  of  all  biblical  con- 
ceptions. 

Fourthly,  the  message  of  the  kingdom 
imparts  to  Christianity,  as  Jesus  proclaims 
it,  the  professed  character  of  a  religion  of 
salvation,  and  of  salvation  not  primarily 
by  man's  own  efforts  but  by  the  power 
and  grace  of  God.  The  kingdom  rep- 
resents the  specifically  evangelical  ele- 
ment in  our  Lord's  teaching.  The  same 
principle  finds  subjective  expression  in 
his  teaching  on  faith. 


Recapitulation  193 

Fifthly,  Jesus'  doctrine  of  the  king- 
dom as  both  inward  and  outward,  com- 
ing first  in  the  heart  of  man  and  after- 
wards in  the  external  world,  upholds 
the  primacy  of  the  spiritual  and  ethical 
over  the  physical.  The  invisible  world 
of  the  inner  religious  life,  the  righteous- 
ness of  the  disposition,  the  sonship  of 
God  are  in  it  made  supreme,  the  essence 
of  the  kingdom,  the  ultimate  realities  to 
which  everything  else  is  subordinate. 
The  inherently  ethical  character  of  the 
kingdom  finds  subjective  expression  in 
the  demand  for  repentance. 

Sixthly,  that  form  which  the  kingdom 
assumes  in  the  church  shows  it  to  be  in- 
separably associated  with  the  person  and 
work  of  Jesus  himself.  The  religion 
of  the  kingdom  is  a  religion  in  which 
there  is  not  only  a  place  but  in  which  the 
central  place  is  for  the  Saviour.  The 
church  form  of  the  kingdom  rightly 
bears  the  name  of  Christianity,  because 
in  it  on  Christ  everything  depends. 

M 


194   The  Kingdom  and  the  Church 

Finally,  the  thought  of  the  kingdom 
of  God  implies  the  subjection  of  the 
entire  range  of  human  life  in  all  its  forms 
and  spheres  to  the  ends  of  religion.  The 
kingdom  reminds  us  of  the  absoluteness^ 
the  pervasiveness,  the  unrestricted  dominion, 
which  of  right  belong  to  all  true  religion. 
It  proclaims  that  religion,  and  religion 
alone,  can  act  as  the  supreme  unifying,  cen- 
tralizing factor  in  the  life  of  man,  as  that 
which  binds  all  together  and  perfects  all 
by  leading  it  to  its  final  goal  in  the  serv- 
1  ice  of  God. 


THE  END. 


INDEX  OF  SUBJECTS 

A 
Age,  the  coming,  22,  68. 

B 

Basileia,  25, 
Beatitudes,  2,  121. 
Blessedness,  89,  125-139. 

C 

Chiliasm,  45,  68, 
Church,  8,  102,  140-168. 
Community,  the  Kingdom  as  a,  82. 

D 

Death,  of  Jesus,  50,  146. 
Demons,  49,  50. 

Development  in  Jesus'  conception  of  the  Kingdom, 
58-64. 

E 

Ethics  of  Jesus,  43,  103-124. 
of  Judaism,  106— 108. 


1 96  Index  of  Subjects 

F 

Faith,  9,  178-190, 
Fatherhood,  7,  34,  130-135. 
Final  kingdom,  8,  17-19,  21,  40. 
Forgiveness  of  sin,  129—130. 

G 

Grace,  4,  9,  23,  123. 

J 

John  the  Baptist,  15,  44,  54. 

Judaism,  its  conception  of   the  Kingdom,  19—22, 
26,  27,  45,  67-72,  85. 
its  ethics,  106-108. 

K 

Kingdom  and  kingship,  25—31. 

of  God  and  of  heaven,  31—37. 

parables,  2,  56-57,  62-63,  73-74. 

the  preliminary,  45. 

the  present  and  the  future,  38-41,  64,  65. 
Knowledge,  99,  136-137. 

L 

Law,  13,  17,  21,  22,  107-111. 

Life,  4,  5,  74.  135-139- 
Love,  9. 


Index  of  Subjects  197 

M 

Malkuth,  25. 

Memlakhah,  25. 

Messiahship,  12,  47,  60-61,  141-145. 

Miracles,  9,  92-95,  1 78-1 81. 

O 

Old  Testament,  9,  11-19,  44,  54,  81. 

P 
Paul,  his  conception  of  the  Kingdom,  46—82. 
Power,  of  the  Kingdom,  90-102. 
Prophecy,  Messianic,  19. 

R 

Regeneration,  4,  74,  77,  137,  159. 

Repentance,  9,  169-178. 

Resurrection  of  Jesus,  146. 

Reward,  11 8-1 24. 

Righteousness  of  the  Kingdom,  9,  89,  103— 124. 

S 

Sermon  on  the  Mount,  2. 

Sonship  in  the  Kingdom,  130— 135. 

Spirit  of  God,  98-102,  156. 

Spiritual  nature  of  the  Kingdom,  39,49-57,  71-72. 

Supernatural  character  of  the  Kingdom,  36,  73-77. 

Supremacy  of  God  in  the  Kingdom,  83-89. 


198  Index  of  Subjects 

T 

Theocracy,  14. 
Truth,  4,  5,  99. 

U 

Universalism,  69—70. 


INDEX  OF  TEXTS 


Matthew  ii.  44              36 

45  90 
iii.  2  20 
iv.  17  I,  169 

V.     6  1 13,  1 15,  120 

8  120 

9  120,  133 
10  113 
12  37 
17  105 
20  118 
23,24  no 
35  16 

46  124 
48  36,  106 

vi.    9,  10               131 

10  105 

12  130 

20  37 

24  173 


Matthew  vi.  30  183 

33    31.  85,     87, 

112,113,116, 

126 

vii.     7-1 1  183 

11  69,177 

12  1 10 
16  III 
20  III 

viii.  12  15 

22  136,  173 

26  184 

ix.  13  177 

X-  39  175 

41,42  123 

X'-    5  93 

11  49,59 

12  54 

13  15 

20,  21  172 

199 


200 


Index  of  Texts 


/latthew  xi.  25          188 

27 

134 

28-29 

130 

xii.  28  31,49,  91,  98 

41 

171 

xiii.  1 1 

57 

15 

122 

16,17 

129 

24-30 

83,  151, 

165-168 

36-43 

56 

41      49, 

152,  161 

43 

31 

44-46 

128 

47-50 

83,  151, 

165-168 

52 

3,  46 

XV.  13 

no 

xvi.  17 

36,  188 

18     140, 

153, 154 

19     33, 

49,  147- 

15 

0 

25 

175 

28 

154 

viii.    3 

175 

6 

184 

Matthew  xviii. 

17 

140, 
167 

18 

148 

20 

157 

23 

129 

xix.  25,  26 

182 

28 

77,97 

XX.      1-16 

123 

25 

151 

32 

127 

xxi.  21,  22 

180 

29-32 

171 

31 

31 

43   15,3 

1,69 

,111 

xxii.     1-14 

170 

2 

127 

21 

164 

xxiii.  23 

no 

xxiv.  30 

97 

47 

123 

XXV.  15 

122 

21-23 

123 

34 

128 

xxvi.  29 

31 

64 

154 

xxviii.  19 

69 

Index  of  Texts 


201 


Mark  i.  15 

I 

169 

ii.  9 

96 

17 

177 

18-22 

59 

iv.  10 

57 

26-29 

74 

V.  34 

130 

vi.  12 

177 

ix.  I 

154 

17-24 

179- 

-181 

35 

151 

43 

176 

X.  15 

46 

17 

5 

18 

177 

30 

123 

Xi.  22,  23 

180, 
184 

30 

33 

1  36 

xii.  13 

68 

24 

97 

30, 31 

109 

xiii.  10 

69 

xiv.  9 

69 

34 

87 

XV.  43 

20 

Luke  i.  17 

99 

35 

99 

iv.  18,  19 

94,98 

26,  27 

69 

43 

I 

vi.  32,  35 

124 

vii.  50 

130 

ix.  27 

154 

xi.  13 

100 

20 

49 

32 

172 

xii.  32   8, 

124,  127 

xiii.  3,  5 

177 

xiv.  15 

20 

16-24 

170 

25-35 

175 

XV.  7,  10 

172,  178 

11-32 

174 

17 

138 

18,  21 

33 

24 

136,  173 

32   136, 

138,  173 

xvi.  16 

15,54 

xvii.  4 

172 

6 

180,  181 

10 

122,  123 

202 


Index  of  Texts 


Luke  xvi 

i.     20 

20,51 

John  xiv. 

9. 

10, 

20 

189 

xviii.  14 

116 

XV.  7,  16 

189 

XX.  25 

151 

22,  : 

-3. 

24 

36 

133 

189, 

190 

38 

136 

xvi.  8,  9 

190 

xxii.  31- 

-34 

186 

30 

189 

32 

172 

xvii.     3 

136 

69 

154 

4 

6 

,88 

xxiv.  19 

99 

II 

190 

47 

177 

25.  2 

6 

189 

49 

99 

xviii.  36 

3» 

68, 

164 

190 

John  iii.  3,  5 

3.  159 

xix.  II 

164 

14 

189 

Acts  i.  8 

99 

21 

190 

ii.  36 

145 

V.  42 

190 

X.  38 

99 

vi.  44, 

45 

190 

51 

189 

I  Cor.  XV. 

23 

-2 

8 

46 

69 

189 

25 

90 

vii,  29, 

38 

189 

28 

87 

39 

lOI 

Hebrews  xii. 

2 

120 

viii.  24, 

28 

189 

ix.  41 

190 

Revelation 

iii. 

7 

149 

X.  14, 

15 

189 

xi.  15 

87 

xi.  25 

189 

xiv.  6 

137 

Exodus  iv. 

22 

13^ 

Index  of  Texts 


203 


Exodus  XV.  90 

xix.  4—6  13 


Deut.  xxxii.  6 

Psalms  xcvii.  i 
xcix.  I 


131 


Isaiah  xxii.  22  149 

xxiv.  21  18 

xliii.  15  18,  131 

lii.  7  18 

Iv.  I  1 15 


Jeremiah  xxxi.  33  115 

34  129 

Ezekiel  xxxvi.  27  115 

Daniel  18 

ii.  44  36 

45  90 


Obadiah  21 
Micah  ii.  12 


18,26 


18 


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